Nothing quite like it when your favourite underrated band finally gets its day in the sun. Original predictions by NME claimed that “One day Spearmint will be hailed as gods” when their second album A Week Away was released in 1999. But despite a cult following and certain critical acclaim, the prophecy was never fulfilled.
Skip to 2009 and - lo and behold! - cutesy summer rom-com hit ‘500 Days of Summer’ makes the briefest of mentions of Spearmint as one of those obscure but decent bands whose classic album [insert classic album title] you should be giving credos to. This in turn prompts the band’s dormant PR powers that be to snap to life, dust off that vinyl copy lying at the bottom of a pile containing such forgotten gems as Suede’s Suede, Pulp’s His N Hers and The Wannadies’ Be A Girl, and start shaking their money makers. Unfortunately, the film, in itself a lattice of plagiaristic patches, may not be the best vehicle to attempt performing the same service for Spearmint as High Fidelity performed for The Beta Band. A Week Away may be a classic Britpop album about being young in the early 90s, and yes, Shirley Lee, Spearmint’s prolific Jarvis-wannabe frontman is still releasing competent material. But whoa there Spearmint, stay right where you are.
The ensuing triumphant referencing tour brings us a re-visitation of the full album live, tonight performing at the ICA, where the crowds of placated Spearmint fans of a certain age have gathered to bask in this moment of glory. The show starts with a brief talking heads clip, allowing each band member to share their take on the experience of producing the album and of key moments in the band’s life. This naturally engages the crowd and when the guys enter the stage the excitement is palpable.
The band wastes no time in bursting into the title track ‘A Week Away’, a song cleverly arranged to set the feel of the entire album through a rhythmic illustration of a sense of urgency to make the most of a brief good thing. The start and end of the song perfectly express trying to stretch time to make it last, delaying the knowledge it’s over and indeed, the song is cut dead as ruthlessly as life dictates. The ambience of the album and the evening is now set - a short holiday break, filled with rock candy days and indulgent boozy nights. Even the album cover is associative of a budget advert for a budget airline.
The whole set smacks of liberal borrowings of their Britpop associates, and if ‘A Week Away’, albeit a great little tune, dips into St Etienne’s Mario’s Café for a moment or two, ‘Isn’t it Great to be Alive’ is simply an indie song about unrequited love with rude helpings of Pulp’s Babies.
Being in this place, partaking in this one-off event, feels as though you have stumbled upon a secret society with its own little ditties and rituals forming a long history of ‘you had to be there’. This even comes across with the bubble machine coming alive during feel-good favourite ‘Sweeping the Nation’, with its dark comment on selling out, and the confetti barrage executed by support band The Junipers during ‘A Third of My Life’, the crisp cool Bossa Nova lament to the long-standing love of your life.
The band is clearly moved by the audience’s warm reaction, they certainly put their backs into it. Frontman Lee and Simon Calnan on keyboards have a comfortable affinity on stage, apparent when they harmonise, making the entire performance seems effortless and fully formed, working perfectly in synch with guitarist Jim Parsons (who stood in as bass player for a short while years ago) who is off on some adrenaline trip, Ronan Larvor on drums and Andy Lewis on bass.
Another crowd pleaser ‘We’re Going Out’ expresses nicely shaking off the rut and having a go at re-zhoozhing life, love, anything. ‘Start Again’ is one of several journeys into self-hating introspective, this one post-hurt anguish, with the final line of the song saying it all.
|
Instrumental ‘Best Ballroom’ and ‘You Carry This With You’ – Wonderwall whiney type anthem, which develops nicely into a darker claustrophobic Madness moment, are followed by ‘A trip into Space’. The sweeping pure bubble-pop yet again contrast with the harsh-realities, globally identifiable lyrics, about cowardly choosing to take the easy route rather than realising your wildest dreams.
‘It Won’t be Long Now’ presumably is a metaphoric reproach of the English tendency to engage in self-depreciatively antagonism towards any attempt at success. Thankfully, the edge of Lee’s sternly wagging finger is taken off by ‘Making you Laugh’ a simple love song; although, somehow, even here Lee’s lyrics still manage to remain somewhat wet and defeatist. The theme remains ambivalent with ‘You Are Still my Brother’ , a love-hate account of young siblings, still maintaining the sting in the otherwise sentimental tale of resolved feelings.
The main part of the gig ends with ‘Saturday’, a fine concluding song, and the band is quickly brought back on for their encore of brand new material off the album’s special edition release, which includes EP Life in Reverse – a zany ‘Outside the Roundhouse’ and its hint of Supergrass essence, followed by the title track off the EP which forms the rockiest effort from band this evening, though even here familiar echoes of another band, Primal Scream this time, manage to seep through.
‘Come on Feel the Lemonheads’ is a re-working of an acoustic track off Shirley Lee’s self titled recent solo album. The final two tracks bring forth the most recent fruit of Spearmint’s labour with ‘Psycho Magnet’, from 2006 album Paris in a Bottle, and ‘Left Alone Among the Living’ from My Missing Days album of 2003. Both songs are indistinguishable adequate creations, and it is a shame not to end the night with future prospects tingling in your mind.
On the whole, the album sounds outdated at best. Barring a few clever arrangement on the title song and ‘A Trip into Space’, delivery is flat-lined and monotone. The personal narration on most songs may be a convenient tool for the writer when there is so much to say which just won’t fit into the song, damn it, but it gets repetitive and smug for the listener after a while, to say nothing of the glaringly obvious Jarvis aspirations Lee (originally from Sheffield) seems to entertain. Most of the songs’ construction of lyrics vs. melody tends to convey the Britpop realist manifesto of ‘I’m clever. Behold how I sugar coat grim self-hating angst with fizzy melodies and tragic beauty. You may think you are safe in escapist territory, but no! You WILL be forced to stare into your own soul, as have I’. We are deep in revival territory, but not enough time has passed for Spearmint to be neither relevant again nor become truly Retro.
|
