Kill the Moonlight

Is there virtue in making people uneasy? Spoon frontman Britt Daniel thinks so. He’s a gifted chronicler of the confused, the frustrated, and the disenchanted, and Spoon’s fourth album, Kill the Moonlight, is his most unnerving hour yet. Amid sounds that are sharp and prickly but decidedly soulful, Daniel writes about characters on the margins, folks struggling for a reason to get out of bed each morning. The tension-fraught “Small Stakes” opens the album by advocating setting the bar low to minimize potential disappointment. The characters in the jaunty, piano-led “The Way We Get By,” “get high in the backseats of cars” and “break into mobile homes,” to stave off boredom. A track later, the narrator just wants “Something to Look Forward To.” But whether Daniel is howling “I just want to get home now!” on the tight, snarling rocker “Jonathan Fisk” or “I want a connection to someone, something,” on “Someone Something,” this is an album about wanting and not getting. It’s not easy listening, but wiry guitars, barbed keyboard riffs, and spare percussion help make Daniel’s dissatisfaction our pleasure.