There’s nothing sexy about being reliable. For well over a decade Spoon has been a perfect model of consistency, churning out quality slabs of its singular brand of minimal, groove-based indie rock every couple years. The band has slowly built up a lot of love in doing so, but you can’t help but wonder how big its star would be with both a masterpiece and an abomination to its name. Its latest, Transference, isn’t either of those things; it’s just another solid entry into a roundly impressive catalogue.

The album isn’t just a rehash of Spoon’s previous work though. After making an unabashed pop statement with 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Britt Daniel and company choose to retreat behind the soundboard, creating their most idiosyncratic, amorphous album in the process.

Indeed, the studio is the most noticeable element of Transference. The band has long been obsessed with messing around behind the mixing board — as evidenced by the continual presence of studio chatter and deliberate flubs throughout its career — but here it fully enters the realm of headphone candy. Transference is full of bizarre little production tricks. Vocals are chopped off mid-syllable, waves of possibly backward mumbles rise up and disappear, instruments recklessly flit between channels, whole songs are given a warped vinyl wobble.

It’s to the band’s credit that it integrates its newfound studio trickery into the scrappy, groove-riding Spoon lockstep seamlessly. The aural flourishes only augment Daniel’s songwriting and never detract from the shaggy dog appeal that has served the band so well along its path to become indie rock’s most dependable players.