PHOTO COURTESY OF TAG TEAM MEDIA Spoon serves up "fiction" tonight at the Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress Street, at 7 p.m.

When given a choice of time-slots for their set at Coachella Music Festival last April, Spoon opted to play at the same time as one of the festival's uber-group headliners: Coldplay.

But wasn't the Austin-based band concerned their audience size might be dwarfed up against a ballad-riffic group played on Top 40 Radio?

"We figured a lot of people would hear Coldplay and then walk over to us," said Spoon drummer Jim Eno, who, along with singer-songwriter Britt Daniel, makes up the band's foundation, "and it seems like that's what ended up happening."

And it's no surprise. Spoon's latest album, Gimme Fiction, is full of songs stamped and sealed with a sense of marked confidence. Each song has an individuality, something remarkable, that turns every track into a sort of letter to the listener that says, "after 10 years we get better and better." In the meantime, they'll be performing in Tucson tonight.

Since Spoon released their first album, Telephono, in 1996, they've become mainstays in indie rock, with a cult-like following and extensive college radio airplay. For the most part, however, the band has remained out of the mainstream limelight save for critics' swooning over 2002's Kill the Moonlight and the recent indie obligation of a song on, gasp, The O.C.

And the shimmery hue of the limelight might be slowly sneaking back to the band with Gimme Fiction, which, once again, has the critics swooning with A-plus write-ups of its scrupulous construction and its extensive sonic diversity from track to track.

It turns out, though, that these are the things that have always been what makes a Spoon album a Spoon album.

"We've done enough records now that we sort of have it down to a science through the way we approach making albums," Eno said of the heavy editing, rewriting and experimentation that went into making this album as well as 2001's Girls Can Tell and Kill the Moonlight.

This "science," Eno maintained, has become anything but mechanical or formulaic, however.

"We do look at each song individually and spend an incredible amount of time on them because we want to make each song stand on its own," he said.

And Gimme Fiction is weighted with tracks that stand on their own, such as the rumbling opening track, "The Beast and Dragon Adored," and the Beatles-soaked "Sister Jack," which is heavy with Spoon's seeming signature recipe for rock: lots of pianos, lots of guitar and tambourines to the max.

These are the songs that anchor to the listener's ear, to remind us we are in fact listening to Spoon, and that clear the way for tracks that swoop down to break apart some of that familiarity. From the storm of hand-claps and staccato 80's-esque drum beat on "They Never Got You," to Daniel's straight-up conjuring of a Gibb brother on the falsetto, funky-ass track, "I Turn My Camera On," Gimme Fiction is full of the new and the experimental for the band.

That said, "I Turn My Camera On," possibly the biggest departure stylistically for the group, was chosen as the album's single.

"We played the album for a lot of people and they all seemed to sort of gravitate to that song," Eno said of Spoon's decision to pick a single that's not necessarily unrecognizable as the band's, but may seem very un-Spoon-like to some fans.

"It's a struggle to pick a single because you need to decide if you pick one that represents the band or one that you think more people might react to," Eno said.

And maybe it's the science Eno and Daniel have crafted in making each song stand independently from the next, going all the way back to the punk-ish, sometimes brooding Telephono, that asks listeners to react. Gimme Fiction, though, seems to have more of a showiness, or a drama to it, more of a request for reaction than ever before.

Whether it's the billowing waviness of cello and viola on "Merchants of Soul," or the nail biting, driving intensity of "My Mathematical Mind," the album seems to say, "look at me!" more than any of the band's prior work.

"This album seems a little thicker, like there's more layering going on, but song-wise, it seems like there are some of the best songs that Britt's ever written," Eno said of the differences he sees in Gimme Fiction versus Spoon's prior albums. "It's really hard to say what I like about these songs, but there's just something that hits you inside when a song is good."

Spoon will play at the Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress Street, tonight, at 7 p.m., with The Clientele. Tickets are $10 pre-show and $12 at the door.