Labels: Captured Tracks
Review by: Sam Westerman
[insert joke about Captured Tracks releasing lots of records here]
Spectrals is one guy from Leeds making stripped-down, fuzzy and distorted pop songs in his bedroom not too dissimilar to some of his fellow uber-hip labelmates. I was originally gonna describe this like that shoegaze-y post-punk type stuff that bands like Crystal Stilts and the Manhattan Love Suicides are mixing with 60’s undertones, but then the guitar goes all jangly and it starts to remind me of Real Estate. So, yeah, the sound is somewhere between those.
This two-tracker opens with some awesomely stompy drums before that jangly guitar kicks in, and then the now customary super bored vocals with some added indifference start to yawn through some catchy and repetitive choruses (“I don’t think I’m right”, “Keep yourself to yourself”) over the reverb-drenched background. In fact, you can probably count the number of different words on this on your fingers. I kinda like that though. It makes for a slightly hypnotic effect that keeps the words twirling around in your head for a while.
While I’m rarely into whole LPs of this kinda thing, it often makes for a sweet seven and if you’re into any of the bands I’ve namedropped you should check this out.
www.myspace.com/spectralspectral