Spoon

Austin's favorite trio dishes out eleven helpings of diverse alt-pop on what may wind up
being the finest record of its ilk all year. Charged by song sculptor/frontman Britt Daniel,
this start-to-finish triumph never underachieves even if it has an effortless aura at times.
The dually twangy and jazzy heartbreaker "Everything Hits at Once" ("Don't say a word/The
last one's still stinging") is a song worth obsessing over, but there's similar merit i... More >

A few songs grab you, the rest grow on you, the lyric sheet makes some sense. Dynamics fill in for groove. But even after you run the hooks through your head for a day--"Take the fifth," "fitted shirt," "that you're next to me"--you don't have much idea what Britt Daniel is on about, except maybe that he wonders why he works so hard on his songs, and (duh) has yet to find true love. And beyond "Take the fifth," no phrases stick out as free-floating signifiers, either. In short, the indie-pop conundrum in a nutshell too slippery to crack--unless you really like filberts. (Grade: B+)