Spoon's Full of Sugar

THE AUSTIN-BASED BAND RELEASES GIMME FICTION

poon's 2002 album, Kill the Moonlight, was the sort of crackerjack rock record that reaches every conceivable benchmark of pop-culture cool—from NPR to The O.C. It was so good that the band even got a call from a bigwig at Elektra Records wanting to talk business—despite the fact that the label had dropped the band just a few years before. After one album for Elektra, in 1998, Spoon eventually hooked up with the tiny outfit Merge Records. Two acclaimed efforts later, they return this month with Gimme Fiction, their best work yet. It's guitar rock dense with actual grooves— as if Elvis Costello had been weaned on Prince rather than Paul McCartney. Lead singer and songwriter Britt Daniel's attention to rhythm and melody is so precise, it's almost academic; O.C. creator and Spoon fan Josh Schwartz says the sound has a "smart edge." But it's also pleasantly relaxed, the result of Daniel's easydoes-it style. "Songwriting is a mindfuck," says Daniel. "When you're doing it every day, it's really about getting lucky, finding the right frame of mind to get something creative to come out. I'd sit on my couch and go, Am I gonna get lucky today?"

BRIAN RAFTERY