Austin, Texas superstars Spoon recently emerged from their studio with a new high in their already brilliant career. Their sixth album, “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga” managed to be everything people weren’t expecting: it wasn’t a bunch of radio-friendly singles, and it wasn’t a return to the stripped-down rock of their breakthrough, “Kill the Moonlight”.

Opening with the swaggering piano rock of “Don’t make me a target”, we get an immediate feel that things are a bit rougher around the edges – it’s immediately accessible, however not necessarily radio-friendly. As usual, Britt Daniel’s lyrics are incredibly hard to decipher any sense of story from, everyone interpreting their own story – “Here come the man from the stars, we don’t know why he go so far, and keep on marching along, beatin’ his drum”. However, these ambiguous lyrics are part of the genius that makes GGGGG such a grower, rewarding each listen.

Some people think that by classifying an album as a “grower” that’s code for “straight for the cut-price dump bins”, however in this case, being a “grower” means that GGGGG rewards each and every listen – every time you hear a new quirk, a new hidden gem that they’ve hidden in the music. It’s the stuff that has made this their strongest album to date.

Second track “The Ghost of you Lingers” is a dreamy, haunting tale of longing for someone (one of the few tales that is blindingly obvious as to what it’s about), and has the vibe of being recorded in a haunted loft late one winter’s eve. In direct contrast, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” is the track that you’ve probably heard on the radio, their hook track that gets you hooked to them. Layers of echoes, driving drums, vulnerable voices make for a gem of a track that shows the Austin stars at their best.

The production values of the band with this new record seems to have been incredibly different to their previous works, cramming more layers, more sounds, more quirks into 36 minutes than most bands do in a back-catalogue of albums. “We wanted it to sound like it had rough edges”, Daniel’s comment to “Under the Radar” Magazine earlier this summer.

“The Underdog” is Spoon’s bounciest, brassiest nod to classic pop, and a perfect contrast to the exotic, spooky minimalism of “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case”‘s shivery Spanish guitars that follow rapidly on its tail. “The Underdog” was produced by soundtrack star Jon Brion, who’s written the soundtrack to such blockbusters as “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “I ♥ Huckabees”, and wouldn’t sound out of place in the climatic montage in most blockbuster films (indeed, it’s already been featured in NBC’s “Chuck”).

Closing off with an upbeat ballad, “Black like Me” slows things off from a distinctly lively album. The lyrics are, as can usually be expected from Spoon, impenetrable – “Street tar in summer will play a trick on your soul”. Whilst some may interpret it (and the album’s title) as a load of baby-speak, Spoon have finally proven that they are very much a high quality band, and very grown up, if not very mature.