It’s Saturday 22nd July 2023 and I’m backstage at Tramlines festival with Fred Macpherson and Jed Cullen from Spector. It’s a weekend that has made film history, as movie buffs and pink lovers descended on cinemas across the country for Barbie and Oppenheimer. It started as a bit of a meme but it snowballed into a cultural moment that became bigger than the teams behind the films could possibly have imagined. In many ways, it’s a fitting way to frame an interview with the band, who The Indiependent can exclusively reveal are preparing to launch their fourth studio album at the end of this year “hopefully before Christmas”. If Now Or Whenever was 2022’s answer to the band’s upbeat debut, Enjoy It While It Lasts, then their new LP is more like 2015’s Moth Boys, says Fred. So less Barbie, more Oppenheimer.
“It’s not electronic sounding like Moth Boys was, but I think it’s the mood; it’s a sort of an after party mood, more than at the club. A little more of a downer than an up, even though as Jed pointed out, it does have bombastic big moments that are probably bigger than Now Or Whenever,” says Fred.
Thematically, the record sounds like it builds on some of the realities of growing up including getting married, or having a kid, which Jed and Fred have done respectively in recent history. That’s not to say that fans can expect lines about changing nappies, though. “It’s for when you find yourself looking forward to going to bed, rather than looking forward to not going to bed. It’s that transition. Not that the album’s about sleeping. But it’s not about not sleeping, if you catch my drift,” says Fred. “It’s a slowing down and an acceptance that excitement and possibility come in many forms, and not just in the way that we assume it will when we’re young, where we want adventure and high-octane energising things. I think it’s about finding the most inspirational energy in places that you least expect, without having too many cloying songs about having a baby, I try to avoid that. I think it slips in but it’s not like songs about responsibility.”
It sounds like it will be less cynical than perhaps some of the band’s earlier work. “It’s reflective. A lot of our albums have been read through this lens of ‘Isn’t everything terrible’, even if it’s a slightly tongue-in-cheek way of saying that. Whereas I think this album is a bit more lyrically measured, and maybe there’s a bit more storytelling, a bit more imagery and style, and true stories from my life about relationships and stuff, but not just heartbreak; reflections on positive relationships and how they change you. Hopefully there’s some kind of positivity that comes out through the end,” says Fred.
“It was for me recorded quite quickly,” Jed adds, before he has to leave to help the band get set up. “But I think it sounds like there’s more variety to the songs, more difference between them. It reminds me a bit more how our earlier albums had less overall sound. I think it’s more true to how we write music, including the production as part of it, like we write drums at the same time we write lyrics.”
There’s a sense that the duo are both really proud of what they’ve produced in record time after their last release. Given their propensity for perfectionism (Fred is still unhappy with the recorded version of ‘Reeperbahn’), their satisfaction is an exciting sign of what’s to come. “I think it also reflects what we do best, in terms of having developed our skills in the band, especially as the last two original members standing,” says Fred. “I think it’s lyrically and guitaristically representative of what we do well. We’ve gotten to be playful in most of our approaches, and I think it’s benefited from breaking our own rules.”
These ‘rules’ Fred mentions are arguably the stuff that makes for some of Spector’s catchiest tunes, such as ‘Chevvy Thunder’. “A lot of our songs are written from a similar perspective, which I think has usually been a version of my perspective. And a lot of our songs have had relatively similar structures over the years, with quite traditional pop structures like verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle eight, not to give away our secrets,” he says. “I think with this album every song breaks from both of those things in some way, even if just a bit of a song. And there are bits where it’s quite freewheeling, where I don’t even necessarily know what I’m singing about. It’s not overwritten, necessarily. It is felt more than thought. Whereas with the last album we were going for, ‘Let’s make anthemic songs’. I think we succeeded with that. There are some anthemic ones on this. But I don’t think it’s 10 back to back.”
“Now Or Whenever was sort of the most cohesive sounding album, not necessarily the most interesting,” muses Fred. Working in production, with artists such as Vistas, has definitely helped the creative process of the new record too, even if it does mean that Fred would sooner listen to the sound of a washing machine or a podcast when he gets in from work than more music. “I’ve definitely learned more about making music,” says Fred. “And it’s also made me appreciate what we have with Spector more as well, because it’s made me appreciate how hard it is for new artists to start music careers and get stuff off the ground. I think now I’m actively making music a lot it definitely has a positive impact.”
Spector have got more experimental as Fred and Jed’s production skills have developed, evinced by the fact they are toying with the idea of releasing unconventionally structured fan-favourite ‘Carburetor’ on an EP following the release of the new album – a song that is predicated on a strong verse (“why do babies never wear black? / you asked me in the queue / I stared into the abyss and you stared back / what’s a boy to do”) and a riff, rather than having a complete chorus.
“I don’t think anyone could ever call themself a cult band. But I think we definitely earnt something just by continuing to exisT.”
The very fact that Spector have an unreleased song that fans beg them to release is a testament to their dedicated fanbase – a collective that Fred lovingly termed “a small group of people with big problems”, in a Line of Best Fit interview. That same feature says Spector have ‘done their career in reverse’, an assessment that Fred doesn’t think is entirely fair. He said: “I don’t think anyone could ever call themself a cult band. But I think we definitely earnt something just by continuing to exist. I think there’s something quite hard won, both in our performances and from the audience’s perspective. There’s a loyalty in being a fan of anything for a long time that’s rewarded, even when it’s just feeling like you liked something before other people. And so we have a tight fanbase. I think up to a certain point, we did our career in reverse, and now it’s gone back the other way. We’ll have to give it another 10 years, we may just get exponentially small. But as long as we stay playing this side of seven o’clock, happy days.”
The band seems somewhat bemused to be back on this side of the bill; their 7.45pm Leadmill stage headline slot is just before Courteeners are due to close out Saturday night on the mainstage. At Truck Festival yesterday, they were sandwiched between their friends, The Vaccines, and Two Door Cinema Club; both bands that came up at a similar time to Spector, and serve as foils to what could have been, had the band not gone DIY after being dropped from Fiction Records. Yoann Intonti even left Spector to join The Vaccines – and so it’s interesting to contrast the two band’s approaches to songwriting.
The Vaccines are always fun live, with catchy lyrics that sometimes lack depth (see ‘Jump Off The Top’). Spector also offer extremely fun, high-energy live performances, but a lot of the joy in Spector’s music is derived from Fred’s witty lyricism — which Chat-GPT is not yet a match for. “We’ve tried but it’ll always be nearly right or not right – like ‘there’s a car coming tonight / are you going to get in? / Gotta be in it to win it / I want some tonic with a gin in it’,” riffs Fred. “I do find, although I’m unlike Nick Cave, I’m very for the absorption of AI into all creative processes and hoping that we do get replaced, though.”
While ABBA might have tried it, Spector’s live outfit isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, thankfully. There’s a sense that band are more stable than ever, thanks in part due to the addition of touring members Nicolas Py and Jen Sanin. “I think for the first time in a while we’re quite comfortable in the band, we feel very lucky to have made it through the last bit,” says Fred. “Especially the last five years, from releasing ‘Untitled in D’ as the first song not being with our record label. From that point on wasn’t plain sailing at all. And now we’re back in a place where it actually feels quite consistent. I think this version of the band is the most tourable, best version. It’s simple, but stronger. I think it’s more fun.”
Perhaps it’s the consistency and Fred’s own reignited passions for the project that attracted a new wave of listeners and have garnered them a headline slot at Sheffield’s biggest music festival. I last saw Spector in Sheffield at their in-store for Now Or Whenever at Record Junkee, just after lockdown restrictions lifted, and Fred jokes that he’s had a lot of hypnotherapy to erase the memory of possibly the smallest crowd they’ve ever played to. It was the start of a year of touring that would spark a real Spector resurgence. But there’s an unease that accompanies their recent rise in popularity, too. Fred says: “It’s always a real honour to get asked to play this late in the day at a festival. And it’s a bit of a new thing for us over the last few years to start headlining tents, even though they’re obviously not the biggest tents. So then the main thing is nerves that people aren’t going to be there when you’re playing around a similar time to like the Courteeners and stuff like that. You just get the sense of ‘What if people don’t come?’, so I think that fear outweighs the excitement of knowing how good the gig could potentially be – y’know, what if the tent is only a quarter full?”
It’s as he’s articulating this anxiety about nobody coming to see them that I’m struck by how different Fred is from his confident, cocky, frontman persona. He’s also worried that due to the adverse weather conditions, there will be mud thrown. Fred claims he hasn’t had a bottle thrown at him since a snowboarding festival in 2011, where he made a comment about Rizzle Kicks. That harks back to an era where Spector were known as contrarians — Fred was nominated in the “Best Twitter” and “Villain of the Year” categories at the 2013 NME Awards. He’s not expecting to get cancelled now, though, although he does caution people against getting tattoos – not because he’s planning on murdering his family, but because there are lyrics he would have gotten tattooed at one point in his life and lived to regret. He finds the fact people want their signatures tattooed or even the person who got his face tattooed bewildering. “I’m not anti it, though,” he says. “It seems like there are more and more people who do have tattoos of our lyrics. It’s amazing. Just don’t do it on our account. Spend the money on buying vinyl or a t-shirt instead. Or pay us to tattoo you.”
As well as offering to tattoo fans’ armpits – you heard it here first – Fred is keen to give something back to the people who have kept them on the road for so long. “We’re thinking about recording a Christmas cover, and putting out a 7” or something that’s not on Spotify. I want to do more things for fans and more cool moments outside of album cycles as well. It feels like we’ve got this good dedicated group of people, so it’d be good to kind of try and reward them with rubbish they can buy,” Fred grins.
Is Spector taking a leaf out of the Barbie marketing playbook? If the festive 7” is hot pink then it’s quite possible… Watch this space.
Interview conducted by Beth Kirkbride
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