Standing toward the back of a sold-out room downstairs at the Middle East a week ago Tuesday and listening to Spoon songwriter Britt Daniel’s nervy stutter of electric guitar punctuate his choked vocals, I found it hard to believe this was the same guy who just a few years ago was ready to leave his band behind and go back to school. By now, most everyone knows the riches-to-rags story of the Austin outfit that jumped the good ship Matador for major label Elektra and made a Wire-y gem of an album called A Series of Sneaks, only to be dropped mid tour, before the disc’s glowing reviews had much chance to start moving units. The pugnacious-voiced Daniel became a poster boy for the old art-versus-commerce tension that was a part of musicmaking long before Elvis stepped into Sun Studios — a suitably sullen-faced symbol of everything that’s wrong with the music industry.

Fortunately, the Chapel Hill indie Merge Records came to the rescue in 2001, releasing Spoon’s Girls Can Tell to an appreciative cult audience. Last year, the band followed that up with another Merge release, Kill the Moonlight, a taut, mordant affair that pared back much of Daniel’s pungent art-punk guitar work in favor of chilly keyboard tones. The tunes, however, remained as aloof, imploring, and economical as ever, and his rumpled voice hadn’t lost an ounce of truculence.

" Don’t say a word/The last one’s still stinging, " the first line from " Everything Hits at Once, " was the sour salvo that kicked off the Middle East show, setting the tone for a crisp set of taciturn new-wavy pop delivered with cool precision. The only ingredients missing from the fizzy, Knack-like kick of " Jonathon Fisk " and " Car Radio " were the skinny ties and matching suits. Drummer Jim Eno’s booming fills drove " The Fitted Shirt " toward Zeppelin territory; the classic-rock overtones of the tune about a son’s nostalgic pining after the old-fashioned fashion of his dad’s days sounded one part sincere homage, one part smart-ass prank. The caustic new " Back to the Life, " which suggested early Kinks garage pop filtered through indie rock’s lo-fi experimentalism, hinted at what was to come: Spoon’s dead-on reading of Ray Davies’s sardonic " Situation Vacant. " It was one of three clever covers in the set, the others being satisfying encore excavations of John Lennon’s " Isolation " and Wire’s " Lowdown. "