321 : Spectrals

On Saturday we went to the awesome Offset festival. We can’t remember any of it, but we do know we arrived too late to see Spectrals, a wonderful one-man wall of sound from Leeds. We are idiots, learn from our mistakes and revel in his bombastic surf-psych throughout October when he plays shows with The Big Pink, Sick Alps and Cro codiles. Here is a track from his new EP on Suplex Cassettes. It rules. We spoke to him about Diana Ross, swagger and doo-wop.

Spectrals – It’s OK (Not To Be OK) [mp3] [Buy]

Louis Jones: “1. Wall-E is a next level film, and a work of art.

“2. I have been in love with Diana Ross since I was 6 or 7 years old.

“3. I was dropped on my head when I was a baby.”

LJ: “Pop Bottles – Birdman featuring Lil Wayne. This is the most ignorant song I’ve heard in my life. I listen to it at least once a day, and if I’ve got something important to do, I’ll watch the video too, just to make sure my swagger’s intact. Lil’ Wayne swings between brilliant and ridiculous so many times in this, and Birdman sounds like he can barely string a sentence together, let alone rap, so that’s brilliant. One word…HARD.”

Birdman ft. Lil Wayne – Pop Bottles [mp3]

“Walk Like A Man – Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons. – This is Frankie Valli telling it like it is, i.e. stop being a little bitch when girls are mean to you. I’m pretty rubbish with that (see : all Spectrals songs for details), so it’s good to have this song around. Musically, it’s pretty ace, the verse always gets me, I don’t think they were ever considered a straight doo-wop group, and they certainly aren’t my favourite, but they definitely had that cool sort of sound and this song makes my playlists on the regular. Also, they supposedly had ties to a certain Italian-American institution, how cool.”

Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons – Walk Like A Man

LJ: “That girls would stop talking about Kings Of Leon.”

Spectrals’ excellent new 4 track EP is out now on Suplex Cassettes. An album will be out soon on Captured Tracks.

01.09.09.