There are a few things in this life that you can just take for granted.
If you’re a musician who’s nominated for an award and you find yourself in the same category as Adele, you’re not going to win. If you’re not David Bowie, your double-sided concept album isn’t going to be as good as you think it is. And if you’re a Tory MP in 2022, you’re almost certainly going to possess an innate and inexplicable dislike for the proletariat.
And, if you cast your mind back ten years, you may well recall that adding ‘Spector are going to take over the world’ to that list might have seemed like a safe bet.
.
After all, what were they missing?
They had the songs, the fans, and, in the form of Fred MacPherson, one of the best frontmen of the late-Noughties British guitar boom. They were the chronically underrated crown princes of quintessentially English indie, with lyrics that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a Morrissey middle eight and a knack for crafting choruses that could fill even the most cavernous of corporate enormodomes.
So, what happened?
God knows, frankly. Was it the rise of EDM that killed off all but the most corporate of Noughties indie guitar gods? Did audiences move away from denim-clad, guitar-wielding Londoners in favour of a hot new wave of sun-kissed, synth-loving Californians? Or was it yet another tragic case of an immensely talented young band falling through the cracks of the oft-cavernous British music industry?
We’ll never know – but frankly, who cares? You see, dear reader, there’s only one thing that really matters about a band in this modern day and age. Are they any good?
And, for Spector, the answer to that question is a resounding ‘yes’.
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At London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Spector proved beyond all reasonable doubt that they’re one of the best British guitar bands of the last ten years.
A pulsating, anthem-heavy setlist was performed flawlessly by a band who sound better now than they’ve ever done; and surely, even the most chronically unimpressed of dragged-along partners wouldn’t have been able to help themselves from singing along to the forever-prescient strains of early highlight Fine Not Fine.
As the band rattled through their fifteen-song setlist, the fan favourites (Celestine, Bad Boyfriend) aren’t allowed to outshine tracks from the band’s latest album, Now or Whenever – instead, they complement them, and showcase the band’s ability to continually pump out songs that any of their indie scene-kid contemporaries would gladly have given their right arm to have written.
They might not be the biggest band on the planet – but, as the closing strains of their final (and best) track, All The Sad Young Men, ring out around the Empire, you can’t help but feel that that doesn’t really matter. They’re a decade deep into their career and they’re still able to inspire the kind of sweaty, throat-killing devotion that most bands spend a lifetime trying to cultivate, let alone inspire.
And, really, isn’t that what it’s all about?
