Spoon Love Ways EP (Merge)

Spoon

Love Ways EP (Merge)

The first song on Spoon's new EP, "Change My Life," starts out almost hesitant enough to feel reluctant. With its stop-start hovering energy, with guitars bobbing and weaving around the drum beats, it seems to take an age before they get down to the business of pop. But then it happens: the first of five songs that further solidify Britt Daniel's place as one of alt-pop's finest songwriters. Though the disc's overall tone is a touch mournful, though Spoon is once again stripped to its core of Daniel and drummer Jim Eno, and though this is their first recorded offering since the major-label album that should have gone platinum but instead went, in terms of sales, limper than a bizkit, Love Ways is, all things considered, a triumph. From the calm-and-collected nervousness of the first track, the EP travels through all their usual subway stops, like the smart and catchy "I Didn't Come Here to Die" and "The Figures of Art." They even take a detour into XTC-styled Brit-pop on "Jealousy." Yet you have to stay to the end of the line to understand the purpose of the whole ride. The fifth and final song, "Chips and Dip," adds vibes and miscellaneous whooshes to a waltzy beat, a slow-dance sway, and a direct-to-the-heart guitar pulse that compels the drums into emphatic punctuation by song's end. It all adds up to a delicious slice of melancholy, a Top 10 hit in a world where Spoon rules the charts and no one's ever heard of Papa Roach.