Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Bonus Track Version)

How exactly does Spoon do it? Their music overflows with invention, but never sounds cluttered or labored. It’s ambitious and intricate, yet immediately accessible. It’s sarcastic and cheeky, but often soulful and substantive. That Britt Daniel and company are able to pull off this trick is cause for celebration, but their ability to do it so consistently and, it would seem, so effortlessly, is reason for awe. Once again representing all that is good about indie rock — enthusiasm, intelligence, creativity, integrity — Spoon offers, like clockwork, 10 nearly perfect songs in 36 nearly perfect minutes. Daniel’s lyrics, still as cock-eyed as they are pithy, continue to explore the corridors between love and loneliness, evident on the infectious pop-soul of “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” the dub-crazy clank of “Eddie’s Ragga,” and the bittersweet folk-rock of “Black Like Me.” Occasionally, however, he looks beyond his own heart. On “The Underdog,” for example, a buoyant mini-anthem powered by bright acoustic guitars and punchy horns, Daniel’s message to “the haves” is succinct and unswerving: “You got no fear of the underdog, that’s why you will not survive.” Six albums down the line, Spoon’s finely crafted songs and sonic ingenuity still astound.