Something snapped into place when I first pulled Spoon's Gimme Fiction CD out of the mail ten years ago. The cover art reminded me of Matisse and the title was an intriguingly inscrutable demand, and together, they filled me with an anticipation that in no way matched up with the fact that I had only liked one Spoon song ever. I desperately wanted the record to live up to this strange feeling I had, and as soon as the sound collage that starts the album resolved itself into the thunderous, apocalyptic piano chord at the beginning of "The Beast and Dragon, Adored," I knew it would.

Rock 'n' roll wasn't in a very good place in 2005. In the mainstream, a vaguely "alternative" sensibility had become the default. But the burst of innovation that the '90s had brought to the style–and the boost it got from the White Stripes and the Strokes around the turn of the millennium–was starting to fade, and it was becoming painfully clear rock wouldn't be able to keep up with pop and hip-hop's creative streaks. Indie rockers had abandoned the last remnants of punk's kill-your-idols philosophy and began retreating into the past, recreating past triumphs from rock's more fecund days.

There's certainly a lot of Gimme Fiction that'll be familiar to anyone who grew up on Boomer pop, but unlike the uncritical retro revivalists like My Morning Jacket and the Black Keys that were coming up at the time, Britt Daniel seemed to feel uneasy about his influences. He struggled with them, bent them, and broke them in interesting ways. "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" sounds like a Billy Joel classic refracted through the Book of Revelations. "The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine" turns up the tautness of Tom Petty's best '70s jams until it becomes trippily claustrophobic. "I Turn My Camera On" follows the Stones' coked-up disco phase into the realm of toxic paranoia.

Britt Daniel seemed to feel uneasy about his influences. "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" sounds like a Billy Joel classic refracted through the Book of Revelations.

It was thrilling to hear someone grappling with classic rock in that way. I'd become suspicious about the extent to which borrowed nostalgia had infected so many people–myself included–who were supposed to be pushing rock's leading edge forward. Did all the cascading retro revivals mean the genre had finally been exhausted of ideas? In Gimme Fiction I heard someone constructing a getaway craft, brutally stripped-down and efficient, that would help them escape the looming cataclysm that rock seemed to be heading towards.

Ten years later, Gimme Fiction still feels just as sharp, just as enigmatically cool, and just as necessary, as rock's nostalgia problem has only grown more acute. Spoon regularly shares festival stages with both reunited alternative rock groups and young artists emulating styles that were current when Daniel first got the band together, and all that sentimental fixation on the past seems terminally stale compared to the artists across the electronic spectrum who are building up and tearing apart entire visions of the future on a daily basis.

It's ironic, considering that Gimme Fiction is now a nostalgia piece itself (with a special tenth anniversary release padded out with demos and bonus material just like a real classic rock album), that it still gives this feeling of hope that rock can wrestle with its past and come out on top. When "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" reaches its melodic climax when Daniel sends it over the edge and sings, "When you believe they call it rock and roll," tell me you don't still really want to believe.