SPEARMINT - Are You From The Future?

The English love using the term underrated to describe those artists too often overlooked by critics and audiences alike: a definition that not only fits Spearmint like a glove, but almost seems coined specifically for them.

Shirley Lee, for that matter, has always been crystal clear about his band's ambitions, publicly declaring on their Facebook page: "We're not part of any scene or movement, we don't do covers and we don't do encores. We're trying to make perfect pop that means something, trying to capture fragments of life and play them back in three-minute bursts. Mostly we fail, but sometimes we pull it off, and we'd love for you to join our club."

The new album “Are You From The Future?” is all this and perhaps more, the perfect capstone to twenty years of an honorable career marked by a string of albums rich in melodic and lyrical refinements worthy of the best pop music has to offer.

Spearmint remain one of the few bands still able to offer even the most demanding listeners a delightful pop interlude, here with a single built on orchestral-funky touches rather atypical for the group, yet exhilarating and thoroughly engaging all the same (“24 Hours in A and E”).

“Are You From The Future?” is one of the rare albums where the delightful energy of Sarah Records still peeks through. You can catch it in the gorgeous pop song “Thomas”, where the urgency of Go-Betweens meets the knack for refrains of Lightning Seeds.

Spearmint don't betray their pop nature — if anything they lean into it, with touching melodies that in other hands would be potential hit singles (“I Don't Sleep Well Without You”, “Pick The Popers Up”), flirting with euro-disco with the same innocence as Saint Etienne or Field Mice (“Senseless”), and dressing their harmonies in white soul in the style of early Orange Juice (“Boom Boom Boom”), all while staying thematically anchored to lyrics with strong social undertones (the aforementioned “Pick The Popers Up” is a clear-eyed analysis of the disastrous effects of Brexit).

What's truly hard to find on this record is a track that feels out of place or superfluous. I know songwriters who'd kill to write a ballad like “Fireflies”, pop singers who've spent years trying to fuse disco and indie-rock with equally memorable results (“St. Thomas In The Darkness”), and I have no doubt the irresistible groove of “It Won't Happen To Me” will put to shame every fan left disappointed by the latest Pet Shop Boys album.

“Are You From The Future?” is the manifesto of that quiet revolution which, under the banner of punk, brought pop music back to the streets and the English working class. Spearmint are still chasing the very same dream that gave birth to the golden age of 80s English music.

Paul Weller (“As I Write This …”) and Morrissey (“The West Pier”) would be proud of such beauty and expressive sincerity, but once again, sadly, these twelve irresistible delights will remain the preserve of a few fearless, intrepid devotees of the seven notes, while everyone else waits for the next moves from Pearl Jam and The Cure, or for a reunion of Pink Floyd.

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03/02/2020