If Spoon were meant to be famous, it would have happened by now. The Austin, Texas, foursome scored a deal with Elektra Records during the post-grunge gold rush and released one jagged, jaded album that sold poorly. Elektra dropped them, Spoon bounced back down to an indie label and then—as if to spite Elektra—became a much better band.

Their great last album, Kill the Moonlight, squared the blunt economy of postpunks like Wire with a melodramatic sensibility evoking Joe Jackson and the Cars; the songs were deadpan-cool takes on youth gone wild, with lyrics about scoring pot, knocking boots to old Iggy Pop records and doing the devil’s bidding.

Gimme Fiction isn’t as instantly enthralling. Britt Daniel, the frontman and primary songwriter, remains both deadpan and cool, and his adenoidal bark has mellowed into one of indie rock’s great lead instruments. But where Moonlight’s portraits of love and lust were as concise and affecting as panels from an underground comic book, too many Fiction tracks seem designed to confound.This return to murky obscurantism, thankfully, comes with a return to guitar noise, which—as the squalling mayhem of “My Mathematical Mind”’s outro proves—can be its own reward. And as a rhythm record, Fiction straight-up kills—drummer Jim Eno, all but sidelined last time, is in the driver’s seat here. The glam-rockish opener, “The Beast and Dragon, Adored,” stomps like a hungover vampire descending a staircase; “I Turn My Camera On” throws a disco-shuffle beat under Daniel’s falsetto, et voilà—it’s an indie answer to the Rolling Stones’ “Emotional Rescue.”

While Spoon find half a dozen ways to reinvent their sound, the best track is a straight pop song, “Sister Jack,” complete with jangling guitars, well-placed handclaps and a lovelorn Daniel fantasizing about his time in “a metal band we called Requiem.” Spoon’s audience is the several thousand people who delight in that kind of rock in-joke.

Download: “Sister Jack,” “The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine”