Spoon
Kill the Moonlight
Merge Records

Long dogged by accusations of purloining from the Pixies, then dissed and dismissed by Elektra Records, Spoon mainman Britt Daniel found his natural groove on last year's Girls Can Tell somewhere between "Alison" and "American Girl," earning the affection of most who heard the record.

On follow-up Kill The Moonlight, he and his fellows breathe more life into the spiky but straightforward popcraft of that effort while reaching for new styles and textures. The change most likely to draw comment is the move away from guitar and toward chunky keyboards as the lead instrument on quite a few songs. The group's frontman has as much as admitted that this conscious move represents their reaction against the arty-whiteboys-with-guitars pigeonhole they sit in. But it's worth noting that keys have gradually taken a more prominent role on Spoon's records over time and writing keyboard-based songs really hasn't altered Daniel's basic approach.

After exploring various forms of heartbreak and disillusionment last time out, the Spoon crew have opted for a lighter libretto on the new release. The downside of this approach comes on songs such as "You Gotta Feel It" and "Don't Let It Get You Down" which don't dig much deeper than the simplistic sentiments of their titles, even if they are redeemed by the undeniable energy, crisp melodies and little sonic treats they bear.

Thankfully, a handful of tracks tackling youth culture fully jell. On those tracks, Daniel operates at the top of his game as he tries the oft-attempted but rarely successful feat of making music for, to and about the kids.

So Spoon cranks out the palm-muted garage charge and heavy tom groove of "Jonathon Fisk," which includes the golden angsty-adolescence line "you're too old to understand." Meanwhile "All The Pretty Girls Go To The City" addresses every young man's concern, and stomper "Give Me Something to Look Forward To" hints at a sexual frustration that smells distinctly of Clearasil. Fierce handclaps and Faces-derived acoustic riffing play tug of war with some trippy mellotron work on "Back To The Life," which explores the generation gap from the other end, with a father admitting to his son, "This world wasn't meant for us both."

Back to youth's reckless abandon, "The Way We Get By," one of the most immediate and catchy tunes on Moonlight, runs through a laundry list of adolescent fantasies about carefree vagabond living ("we get high in the back seats of cars" and "we make love to some strange sin") somehow merged with music geekery (a pair of Stooges songs duly namechecked). On paper it looks a bit contrived, but Spoon pull off their teen anthem for the hornrim set, thanks to the attitude that drips off the vocals. Daniel may have one of the best rock 'n' roll voices going: raspy, slightly nasal and infused with enough confidence and vulnerability to deftly channel the genre's archetypes, from the teenager flaunting defiant ennui to the tough-but-tenderhearted exile.

The other major highlight on Kill The Moonlight is also the band's biggest departure from form. Holding aside a recognizable bit of stop-start electric rhythm guitar, "Stay Don't Go" is a reinvention. Daniel tries out a falsetto just this side of a female impersonation over Doppler effect synth peaks and human beatbox that owes some debt to the Flaming Lips' "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate." It's tweaked, minimalist and a hell of a lot of fun. In the end, we can probably put up with all the tiresome and predictable "indie rock is dead" talk that Spoon's leader has been spouting lately, as long as it's backed up with the balls to be ambitious, silly and sexy all at once.

— Wayne Lewis (capsighs@pacbell.net)