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10 years ago was my first ever festival. Leeds Fest 2012 had a good line-up of music that a 16 year old me couldn’t have cared less about as I prioritised getting drunk, doing balloons and losing my virginity. It was a good weekend n’all. I got drunk, did balloons and my friend Adam had his hair set on fire. 

On the Saturday I was hungover, sat on a broken camp chair and staring into a half-drunk can of Fosters trying to see my eye’s reflection. My mate Platty who was off his tits on god-knows-what was wearing a Lion shaped twat hat, the tassels of which he kept throwing into the air and going, “I’m Aslan!” He asked me if I’d ever heard of a band called Spector, to which I said no cos at this point I’d barely even heard of the headliners, so he drags me from my eye’s reflection to the NME tent, saying with every step, “aw mate, trust me mate, you’re gunna love these guys mate, I’m Aslan.” 

Spector came on stage that day in Hawaiian shirts which I thought was pretty cool at the time and when they played it elicited a response from a crowd that I had never seen in my life. Just this group of total strangers and Platty, all of us lost in the pocket of a catchy chorus and having our sense of being thrown around by some bloke in round glasses. He had me singing words to songs I’d never heard before by the end of it and I revelled in that moment and that feeling and maybe I’ll buy a Hawaiian shirt too. 

Their set sparked something in me that day as I became obsessed with seeing everyone and anyone I could, chasing that feeling once again, that familiarity with people I’d never met and connection with those I’d never held. I’d been to gigs before but I’d argue my genuine love for live music, festivals and getting off my trolley properly started in that moment and I haven’t let it go since. 

Now it’s 10 years later, the Queen is dead, Adams hairs grown back, mines all fallen out and I haven’t spoken to Platty in about 6 years. I’m walking out of Kings Cross Tube Station on a damp and humid night, foreshadowing a climate we’re gunna have to get used to for the next few months. Heat-soaked rain bangs on concrete and gives off the smell of disappointing holidays. Pubs are filled with Tottenham fans wishing they were in Portugal and other punters wishing they weren’t surrounded by Tottenham fans. Kebab shops are swarmed with drunk important looking people talking numbers and what the Misses has done this time and maybe I should start dressing smarter. Central London hasn’t aged a day. 

There’s the neon red of Scala shining in between all this, birds flying past creating silhouettes against industrial horizon that stands out like Revelation. People my age yearning for the good times line up and hold jackets over their head, cupping one hand over a phone screen as tickets are scanned and thank yous exchanged. The floor in Scala looks like a decommissioned roman bath and the bar staff are pouring double pints of Staropramen like there’s a shortage. Finally, passing through all of that into an air-conditioned, smoke filled, jam-packed room, the clocks start to turn back and I swear it looks almost tent-like. 

DJ sets flaunt songs from the 2010’s like If You Wanna and Best Of Friends as the crowd sing-along and talk of better times. We’ve all gotten proper jobs and gained weight since then. What happened to Palma Violets and why do I suddenly fancy a balloon? James is talking about the first time he saw Spector and Lisa hasn’t done a Jaeger Bomb for 4 years but is throwing them back tonight. 

You feel more and more cramped on this plane that defies all time and space as the crowd floods in more and more and you think surely this has to be it and need to decide in the next 5 minutes if you wanna get in there or get drunk. Some lads behind me talk about Reading 2012 and I think about texting Platty and seeing what he's been up to for all these years and then consider my waistline and my hairline and my life as it stands and then I’m back in that NME tent and I’m wondering where it all went wrong before the lights dim and a synth hums and I’m told to keep the past in the past. 

2012 and 2022 line up parallel to one another as Spector come onto the stage. The ten-year anniversary of their debut album Enjoy It While It Lasts is exactly what it promised to be, a complete playthrough of what remains to be a classic and a revisiting of the good old days. Every now and then you feel like you’re alone in your hopelessly romanticised idea of how quickly time passes but then people cry and Fred waves at ex-band mates and the crowd reflect on past gigs and suddenly there is that feeling of familiarity and connection once again, back, after a decade long hiatus but also after no time whatsoever. 

Throughout the entire gig every song on the album is sung word for word, people clap for too long during certain tunes and are taken aback by a Lay Low guitar solo, revelling in a moment where years are nothing and everything. Fred works the crowd and sings with added vibrato as he wobbles, feet propped up by the same hands that have been dropping their needle on his vinyl for a decade. 

The set is the entire album in order played to perfection, meaning after every track there is excitement as people anticipate what’s coming next. They remember the first time in their room, or at pre-drinks or in a bar or in the NME tent when they first heard the likes of Celestine, Upset Boulevard and Chevy Thunder. 

Never Fade Away plays the band out and as the crowd join in and balloons fall from the ceiling it’s like everything is one, the balloons and the crowd and the moment. Ageing stops. Time stops. What is time anyway? Time of our fucking lives is what. And you know whatever and ever I’ll never let you go and where are all my friends and you don’t light me up like you used to and I’ll never fade away, I’ll never fade away, I’ll never fade away, I’ll never fade away. 

And then it’s quiet, all except for one voice, which is all of our voices but combined in that state of space of time, in a bar, in our room, in a tent. But, they say, familiarity, if I do, they continue, connected, it’ll be because you ask me to. 

And just like that the band leave the stage, the balloons pop and the 2010’s are over as soon as they began. Sucks if you missed it.

See photos from Nici Eberl below:

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More about: spector