Transference

Some bands, there's no accounting for: they work their magic and get out, leaving only their traces. What's unique about Spoon is that they put all their methodology up front: this is a group that shows you its work, particularly in the studio. You hear every effect, and while Britt Daniel's words are often gnomic, his singing is anything but coy. Meanings aside, almost nothing is hidden. 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga all but wallowed in the guts of its own making, with liberally sprinkled bits of studio talk and song warm-ups. So, why does Spoon still seem so uncanny?

Maybe it's because every album goes just left enough from the previous one to keep the alert listener on her toes. If Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was the sound of Spoon loosening up, Transference is as wound tight as anything they've recorded. Not the way 2005's Gimme Fiction was, where that knottiness made the material seem ominous (the slow-stretch opening of "My Mathematical Mind," for example); on Transference, what's tight are the rhythms and production touches.

"The Mystery Zone," the album's most immediately catchy song, features a two-note guitar under four-note bass throb that builds and builds until it comes to a sudden stop, a la the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." That's followed by "Who Makes Your Money," which builds off a dull snare snap, double-tracked to slightly shadow itself, but still clipped where other bands might let the echo ring. A muffled three-note keyboard loop cuts abruptly, as do some of Daniel's vocal overdubs; a single, metronomic guitar note begins plucking incessantly midway into the song. Even most of Daniel's repetitions of the title phrase leave off the final syllable; until the end, it sounds like he's singing, "Who makes your mind?" These affects draw as much attention to themselves as the studio talkback of the prior album, but rather than alienating the listener, they draw you in closer, to examine the mechanism. Other times, Spoon reverses course mid-song — "I Saw the Light" switches from a stiff swagger to a step-walk with guitar work that expands so gradually it takes a while to realize that Daniel is soloing.

Transference is rawer than all but the earliest Spoon albums — Daniel has said that much of it consists of gussied-up demos, and the tinny bashing of "Trouble Comes Running" makes that easy to hear. But its rhythmic acuity and smart layering — dig the way the arrangement of the closer, "Nobody Gets Me But You," keeps shifting while maintaining a solid core — also make it one of their most sophisticated. With a catalog as sharp as Spoon's, that's saying something.