About the time A Series of Sneaks hit the scene, I probably could have been convinced to wager a substantial amount of money on Spoon coming out on top. On top of what? Of anything. That album was the sound of a band that had nailed their particular aesthetic to the wall, or so I thought. Spoon was ready; Spoon was there; and then, fatefully, Spoon was dropped. Monsieur Laffitte, the Elektra A&R; man whose villainy was immortalized on the band's The Agony of Laffitte EP, set them adrift. Now, few things fuck with a band like being dropped by their label (taking third place behind smack, and of course, suicide), and indeed, something changed in Spoon. Freshly cut loose, they suddenly decided to go 'respectable,' cleaning up their sound as if to win back Laffitte's heart while deriding him in song.

I'll be candid: at that point, I missed Spoon. Girls was swell, but its slickly produced lounge grooves only made me long for the casual "just swung by the studio to drop off some tunes" brilliance of Sneaks. Nothing on it could ever generate the massive, ultra-condensed endorphin rush of "Car Radio." Fortunately, somewhere between there and here, Spoon took the time to burn their sound down to its foundation, dissect the sullen intricacies of Girls using Sneaks' barbed, melodic hooks, and reassemble something out of the pieces that's far more than the sum of its parts. The result, Kill the Moonlight, plays like a greatest hits compilation not of songs, but of sounds-- the best echoes of everything Spoon has done swirl around and unite. Bowie soul seamlessly flirts with Spoon's deceptively simplistic rhythms and vocals that span all the hope and hopelessness of the human condition.

Moonlight plays out as if Spoon is standing dead center in a vast, empty warehouse. Thousands of seats are placed close to the band, and there's a drawn-out nervousness-- total silence-- before they produce a single sound. At that moment, a Hammond-esque drive kicks off "Small Stakes" with enough energy to get even a factoryful of hipsters doing the wave. And then you look around and realize that you're the only person in attendance. This record is an adventure in starkness, beyond Girls Can Tell even while evoking some of that album's finest moments.

But any hack band can create space, right? Maybe. But using it is the tricky part. Like some of the best minimalists in music, Spoon use the null and void to create tension which bolsters and sets apart every nuance of the music-- every handclap, every reverberating crash, every beep from the synthesizer. "Paper Tiger," in particular, effortlessly floats into of the realm of the hyper-real; there's nearly more silence than music. Spoon has always struck me as a band that, no matter how good the rest of their album was, could always be relied upon to produce at least one or two songs every album that would make my jaw drop ("Car Radio," "Everything Hits at Once," "Lines in the Suit"). And while Moonlight has far more than its fair share of stunners, "Paper Tiger" blows them all away. Daniel distantly croon-growls, "I'll never hold you back/ And I won't force my will/ 'I will no longer do the Devil's wishes'/ Somethin' I read on a dollar bill," over reverse-playback beats, solitary piano chords, and drumsticks; nothing else. It's an effect of singular elegance and power.

The rest of the album is largely more upbeat, fortunately, or it could have slipped into a fugue. A little of the guitar braggadocio that netted the band so many past comparisons to the Pixies, and older acts like Wire, is showcased on "Jonathon Fisk." The riffs hit hard and fast, and some of the horns Bowie once used on Hunky Dory drop by to lighten things up. Later, the rock piano stylings of Jerry Lee Lewis could shed a tear for catapulting the bittersweet "Someone Something" into the "best of" section of Spoon's catalog. Bright-eyed optimism and the faintest hint of the uncertainty of expectation are conveyed through the staccato piano, and the vocals build and carry it off to a beautiful conclusion. Also of note: "Something to Look Forward To" may be the best fusion of older and newer Spoon to date, and "Stay Don't Go" will likely be your only chance to experience a sample of Britt beat-boxing. Truly surreal.

Kill the Moonlight is a hailstorm of complex emotional underpinnings; sometimes vibrant, sometimes morose, but usually in a frighteningly anxious limbo. "Vittorio E" closes shop and turns eyes toward the future with a 3½-minute synopsis of the album's emotional heft. Choir-like harmonies fade in from the depths behind the main vocal, and a simple, sweet piano refrain lifts it away from any of the sadness or trouble left behind it. It never looks back.

Indeed, Spoon's latest is their magnum opus to date; it takes a scalpel to the highlight reel of their career, cutting and pasting a 35-minute tour de force that ends too soon. And yet, despite all the elements Spoon has toyed with over the years, it doesn't sound distinctly like any of them. In fact, this all feels like a decidedly different Spoon, like the real start of the next phase for which the merely likable Girls Can Tell was only a bridge. So be prepared. The difference is in the distance.

-Eric Carr, August 15th, 2002