It’s six months to the day since Spector’s last live show, a fact that doesn’t appear to be just a coincidence. Marking their return with single ‘I Won’t Wait’ and a tiny East London show, Spector are back on the scene in the most Spector way possible. Welcoming themselves back to a city they never left, they tear into a nostalgic set packed with songs they’ve accumulated in their eight years of making music.
After firing straight into high energy single ‘Chevy Thunder’, Fred Macpherson acknowledges the room. “I should have known that the only people to come down to this gig would be people who’d be willing to wake up at 9am and get tickets within 90 seconds… welcome to a room of weird Spector fans, including the five of us” he says, pointing at the band behind him. The band has changed radically in the past half-decade. Adding to the departure of Christopher Burman after their debut album, bass player Tom Shickle has eschewed life on tour and returned to the world of fashion. But the new band smash the old songs, as Macpherson pronounced the room a safe space for un-cool people and encourages them to lose their shit.
The set list is an all-star line-up for any fan of the band, featuring songs from both albums including ‘Bad Boyfriend’, ‘Twenty Nothing’ and ‘Celestine’. Despite their new single having spent less than 24 hours in the public domain, Macpherson correctly presumes that most of the room will know all the words already, a testament to the witty lyricism and pure sing-along factor of their music. Including only one song from their 2018 EP Reloaded, they stuck to the classics and the crowd pleasers, finishing on the standard end point of ‘Never Fade Away’ and ‘All The Sad Young Men’.
The energy of the basement room was palpable last night, and the vitality of the fanbase sat steadfast in the sweaty atmosphere. But the show was, without a doubt, a warm up for bigger things. Sticking to the crowd pleasers and playing a fairly recycled setlist, they paved the way for their return and reinstated themselves into the forefront of people’s minds. With a 23-date tour announced today, we can’t wait to see the fresh tour they’ve inevitably got up their sleeves for later this year, and like anything Spector, it’ll probably be perfectly executed.
