SUNSETTER

Spector - Moth Boys

Since releasing their debut album Enjoy It While It Lasts in 2012, Spector’s career trajectory seems to have steered closer to that tongue-in-cheek title than the band might have hoped. Despite being signed to a major label and attracting a heady amount of hype, the album failed to reach the Top 10 in the UK Album Charts and was met with a mixed critical reception. Guitarist Chris Burman left the band the following year, leaving the remaining four-piece to reorganise and rethink their approach to the continuation of Spector.

The result, Moth Boys, is a more nuanced, mature record than its predecessor, and one that brings the early-Killers-esque synths that skirted around the edges of Enjoy… to the forefront of the band’s sound (as signposted by former drummer Danny Blandy’s move to keyboards). Nonetheless, frontman Fred Macpherson offers lyrical nods to Spector’s past, from the ‘miserable girls’ of ‘Celestine’ reappearing in ‘All The Sad Young Men’ to a mention of ‘a Chevy in the parking lot’ in ‘Don't Make Me Try’.

At times, the more subdued tone of Moth Boys can leave you pining for a bit of the energy that defined the debut, but by and large the sonic shift has done Spector good. ‘Kyoto Garden’ is possibly the best song they’ve written so far, an exercise in restraint that sees warm synth pads slowly joined by more twinkly instrumentation as the track proceeds. There’s a moment nearly two minutes in where the track swells and suddenly a syncopated stab of synth seems to act as a countdown to an explosion of noise, but the new Spector manage to avoid such a cliché.

Depending on your point of view, some of the songs on offer here come across as very cheesy, though the band has always had an air of that about them. Case in point: ‘Believe’, which from its title to the synth-brass breakdown seems like a throwback to 90s electropop, but nonetheless packs a killer chorus and ends up being amongst the pick of the album cuts.

It’s not all great; the otherwise pretty good ‘Decade of Decay’ is marred by its refrain of ‘meet a pretty girl/Try to take her home’ which is delivered almost like a nursery rhyme, whilst ‘Cocktail Party/Heads Interlude’ manages to not really go anywhere for three minutes before changing direction and not going somewhere else for the remaining two.

But that is not to detract from a highly commendable effort from Spector to adjust to their new situation. The closer, ‘Lately It’s You’, starts off much in keeping with the album’s sound, but ends building back up towards a more ‘classic’ Spector sound, with organic drums (a rarity on this record) and the guitar and bass of Jed Cullen and Tom Shickle coming back into play. It’s actually quite a cathartic end to a somewhat bittersweet album lyrically and sonically; some might call it a regression, a casting aside of the development the band has undergone over the course of the last three years. I’d call it a band comfortable enough in their new skin to offer a little knowing nod to the fans. It’s the sound of a band who can finally enjoy it all (while it lasts).


By Thomas Rees (who gets major kudos as being our first guest writer!)