- If you created a Venn diagram of soulfulness, musical adventurousness and technical prowess, right in the intersection of those three circles you'd find Spoon. From their beginning in the mid 90's through to their most recent album, 2014's They Want My Soul, Spoon have been successfully walking various tightropes: a rock band indebted to classic R&B who are nonetheless forward-looking, and a band who fully utilise the possibilities of the recording studio without overcooking the results. Spoon have always been at their best when they restrain themselves to a few sonic elements at any one moment time, utilising constantly shifting arrangements and changes in texture around sinewy rock music as their main weapons instead of an all-out musical assault.

This approach reached its peak on 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, before the band deconstructed their sound on 2010's Transference and then took a short break before the emergence of the reinvigorated, brighter version of the band that appeared on They Want My Soul. Hot Thoughts continues on from the previous album's approach, again teaming the band up with producer Dave Fridmann, most known for his work with The Flaming Lips and Tame Impala. Fridmann's production style is immediately apparent on Hot Thoughts – drums are roomy and slightly distorted, synths and other production flourishes dance around the soundstage, and everything is bright and colourful. It makes for a slightly less subtle, but consistently engaging version of Spoon.

Luckily Fridmann, along with songwriter / singer / guitarist Britt Daniels and drummer / producer Jim Eno, have recognised Spoon's strengths and hence haven't cluttered things up too much. Instead there's a slightly wider palette of sounds used on Hot Thoughts, with a judicious (though tasteful) use of synths and electronic drums throughout. It's all folded into the classic Spoon sound pretty seamlessly though. Probably the best example is found in 'Whisperi'lllistentohearit', where warbling synths and spacey washes of delay and reverb are gradually built up with guitars until the song takes a 90degree turn at the halfway point into classic Spoon territory. Despite the myriad of sounds and instruments used throughout the song, it never becomes cluttered at any single point. Instead, textures come and go as needed, just as they should in a well made Spoon song.

Elsewhere we get more classic-styled Spoon on songs like 'Do I Have To Talk You Into It' and 'Can I Set Next To You', both built around a rock solid drum line that benefits from the heft that Fridmann is able to bring to the table. The more experimental side of the band is best exemplified by 'Pink Up' and 'Us' - the former stretches out over its 6minutes with vibraphone, steel drum and muted horns, never rising above a murmer while constantly shifting shape. The latter is something of a reprise taking those muted horns and putting them front and centre, but its position at the end of the album somewhat isolates it from the rest of the record – it may utilise much of the same instrumentation and chords as 'Pink Up', but it's so tonally different to everything else that it seems a strange end to Hot Thoughts, more like the jazzy post-rock of Do Make Say Think than Spoon.

Still, Hot Thoughts manages to be yet another strong release in the Spoon canon. The band is smart enough to recognise when the old 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' adage applies, while still finding ways to add a few new wrinkles to a sound they've been refining for going on two decades now.

- Cameron Smith.