Austin indie darlings Spoon may have made their best album yet – and that’s saying something for the band that made Gimme Fiction and Kill the Moonlight.

After dabbling in electronica on 2017’s Hot Thoughts, Britt Daniel, Jim Eno and crew decided they wanted to make a Texas rocker. After a long wait (this 10th album was originally teased to fans back in 2020), Lucifer on the Sofa delivers.

Though this configuration of Spoon, including guitarist Gerardo Larios, bassist Ben Trokan and keyboardist Alex Fischel, has only been playing together since 2019, their time on the road together clearly brought them together as a tight unit.

Spoon always starts its albums off strong, and Lucifer on the Sofa, co-produced by Mark Rankin (Adele, Queens of the Stone Age), is no exception. It kicks off with a cover of Smog’s “Held,” featuring some of that classic Spoon studio chatter and an excellent bass line. “The Hardest Cut,” born from a ZZ-Top-esque riff the band had nicknamed “the Texas riff,” has everything you want in a rock song: a great beat (those handclaps!), crunchy guitars, and it’s catchy as hell. With lyrics featuring Daniel’s signature defiance like, “Followin’ the leader gonna turn me off the religion,” “The Hardest Cut” sounds like pure rebellion.

“Wild” is another highlight on an album that’s all killer, no filler. Here and often, the band members are so in tune with each other that the music sounds almost sympathetic to the singer. There’s the sturdy drumming that gives a beat perfect for walking out of a one-horse town, the piano playing that swells on the chorus and bolsters the vocals like it’s adding moral support, and the guitar that seems to share and amplify the feelings of catharsis.

“And the world, still so wild, called to me/ I was lost, I’d been kept on my knees,” Daniel wails on the refrain.

The album takes a sweet turn with the dreamy “My Babe,” an adoring pledge of allegiance. “I would get locked up/ Hold my breath/ Sing my heart out/ Beat my chest for my babe,” Daniel declares. The track starts out sedately but can’t seem to help itself from rocking and becoming a chant-along by the end.

“Feels Alright” grooves, like ’90s-era Afghan Whigs (when they were channeling ’60s soul vibes). “On the Radio,” which comes pounding in with urgent-sounding piano, finds Daniel celebrating having the radio on and feeling a little less alone because of it: “They’re talking to me/ All night/ On the radio.”

There’s even a bit of their past on “The Devil and Mr. Jones,” harkening back to classic Spoon with the use of horns (“The Underdog”).

“Astral Jacket” is a surprisingly mellow detour on Lucifer on the Sofa. It’s a gorgeous love song in the vein of “Inside Out,” harp and all. “Satellite,” a song that had been kicking around Spoon’s live set for years, delivers an earworm of a chorus, with Daniel desperately insisting, “I know I love you more,” followed by some wailing fuzz guitar.

The album comes to a close with the quiet desperation of the title track, on which Daniel paints a bleak picture of walking through an empty pandemic-times Austin.

“Cruising up Lavaca, against the traffic lights/ Gonna walk all evening/ There’s no one out tonight,” he sings. It’s symbolic of how he described Lucifer on the Sofa as the worst one can become – bitter and unmotivated.

Spoon rose above its own Lucifer by coming through a soul-sucking pandemic with a vibrant album full of energy and color. Taking their time and playing together at Jim Eno’s Austin studio paid off in spades for the band members. They sound alive and hungry, which is quite a feat for a band that’s almost 30 years old. Lucifer on the Sofa makes it clear that it’s time for people to stop calling Spoon indie rock’s most consistent band and just call Spoon one of the greatest rock bands ever.

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold and Instagram.com/thousandfold.