Spoon Girls Can Tell (merge)

Remember the '80s?

Apparently the members of Spoon do. After a topsy-turvy nine-year career that has wavered between underground caché and dangerous obscurity, the Austin, TX band's latest, Girls Can Tell seems bent on conquering the ethos of the decade of greed.

Neglecting both to copy the post-Kid A abstractionist aesthetic or to wallow in grunge's sallow scraps, the band's full-length Merge debut finds the band in the era of The Knack. Its jumpy basslines and All-American riffs get the arms swinging and heads bobbing, but there's a peach-fuzz edge that reminds you that it's still not Mellencamp. These songs work best as indie rock for the Banana Republic set, easy to imagine notched at track five on those free-CD comps you get if you buy $50 worth of stretch pants.

Nowhere is the feeling more evident than on "Take The Fifth," where frontman Britt Daniel makes love to all things pop. Daniel's breathy vocals conjure images of leather jackets and spiky pink hair, all lacquered over with a super-bright guitar/drum mix that's more like Talking Heads than the band's 1996 debut, Telephono. Girls Can Tell is full of skating-rink anthems, rife with ruminations on the downfalls of following in dad's footsteps ("Fitted Shirt") and unrequited puppy-love ("1020 AM").

As with much of Spoon's work, this album doesn't offer anything new or unconventional. But at least it offers a reason to stash those "best-of" compilations of '80s faves for awhile.

-By Jonas Blank