Austin, Texas’ indie stalwarts Spoon snuck one past the music press by announcing their new EP, Got Nuffin, less than one week before the album’s release. The three song EP finds the band both sticking to their proven songwriting formula while also trying out some new styles that, while sounding good, don’t altogether showcase the band’s true strengths.

The opening track, “Got Nuffin,” starts out with a steady pulsing bass line that is matched by a stinging guitar pattern which is held together by Jim Eno’s staggering drum work. Between verses Britt Daniel lays down some swirling, effect laden guitar parts. When Daniel sings “I’ve got nothing to lose, but darkness and shadows,” over the seductive backing music, you can’t tell if that is a good thing or bad. The song ends with a great instrumental surge before leading into “Tweakers,” which spends its entire three and a half minute lifespan under the cloud of a distant, faded drum beat. Beeps and hisses are intertwined, but the instrumental song is a strange departure from the band’s usual pop oriented angular rock. The third song on the disc, “Stroke Their Brains,” has the band returning to their minimalist indie rock sound with a steady guitar strumming pattern. The song follows the lead of songs like “The Ghost That Lingers” from their last LP, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, in its use of buzzing backround effects to add an extra dimension to the song, albeit in a much smaller scale.

This is the sixth EP the band has put out during its career and realistically it’s not something that will be put alongside their strongest work when they finally hang up their instruments. The three original songs, especially the title track and “Stroke Their Brains,” are classic Spoon and offer little to complain about, but are just not something that really knocked me out when I listened to them. “Tweakers,” is a bold departure for a band who generally sticks to their (pretty consistently) amazing formula. It is not that the song is bad, but when Spoon puts out a three song EP, it is slightly disappointing when one of them is an instrumental dirge that doesn’t give longtime fans the sound they might be hoping for, especially since it has been nearly two years since they have released a new album. While you have to give them credit for reaching in new directions, I hope that Daniel doesn’t scratch his moody instrumental itch too often in the future, as it is a formula that really takes away from the strengths that have made his band one of the very best of the last 10 years. Hopefully in addition to recording secret EPs, the band is hard at work on their next full-length and it can take this momentum and return to writing the great songs we have come to love and expect.

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