Hot Thoughts

Hot Thoughts finds Spoon at the peak of their considerable powers, their ninth album effortlessly unfolding and gradually revealing its mysteries as they cement their place in the firmament of undeniably great rock bands.

Adding some new tricks to the mix while still finding time to play to their strengths, Hot Thoughts is another strong entry in Spoon's sterling discography.

Hot Thoughts is the perfect encapsulation of what Spoon are all about, despite frequently sounding like nothing they've ever done.

The album strikes almost the perfect balance between traditional songs and adventurous sounds, which makes it stand out in Spoon’s extensive catalog of great albums.

One of their strongest albums in a while, Hot Thoughts is more proof that Spoon only get better at introducing new ideas into their music, while sounding unmistakably like themselves, as the years pass.

Hot Thoughts doubles down on what we already knew: that Spoon are a band always looking to push themselves, a fact that seems to be getting more acute with each passing album, and it should be celebrated.

No one engineers post-punk propulsion into precision-tuned rock-and-roll melody better than Spoon auteur Britt Daniel. Nearly 25 years in, his group has made maybe their best record yet – a line that been repeated, accurately enough, with most every record they've made.

The whole record is crafted with an air of distrust, but its execution is surgically precise. Spoon’s stream of critical acclaim shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.

Hot Thoughts provides no catharsis; the tension that pervades the record is never relieved. Instead, you’re left feeling nervous and covered in studio sheen. Hot Thoughts, therefore, may go down as the band’s most polarizing effort - but that was likely the goal: a buildup of anxiety with no release in order to evoke an emotional response.

Spoon stay in their well-earned lane but tweak the formula just enough on their ninth album, keeping their reliably great songwriting and adding new, electronic textures.

Spoon incorporates some strange experiments into their slick indie rock sound.

Hot Thoughts is no game-changer, and the band risks sounding as safe as Coldplay at times ... Sometimes taking a risk for pop can sound like no risk at all, especially with a band that sounds as effortless as Spoon.

Not many bands can make dogged experimentalism easy for consumption, but Spoon are experts in the game. ‘Hot Thoughts’ is more evidence of their serious knack for, ahem, spoon-feeding weird ideas.

Supported at home by a college radio and alt.rock infrastructure, their smart, riff-tastic indie-rock, with its modest quotient of invention, clearly sates a certain appetite; over here, it all sounds a bit dated and beside the point.

A planned dalliance, ‘Hot Thoughts’ reveals its irony: a well-thought rush of blood, a planned frisson. It’s a turn on with limits.

Hot Thoughts is often at its most appealing, though, when it sees Spoon sticking to what they've long proven they know how to do best.

Hot Thoughts, the band’s ninth full-length, sounds like a Spoon impersonation. Layers of overthought production and tiny tricks that made the evolution of its songs such a feat in the pop division of indie rock are difficult to dig out because they weren’t placed here to begin with.