soundCHECK 286 – February 12th 2015

I love this time of year. And by love, I mean hate. That’s almost exclusively because of ill people. Specifically, the kind of ill people who find it impossible to differentiate between the common cold and influenza. You know the type of person I mean. The moment they get a sore throat and a headache they surrender what little strength they have left to the pursuit of climbing aloft the nearest rooftop and declaring to all within earshot that, yep, they’ve got the flu. Influenza. The infectious virus so aggressive that vulnerable groups have to be vaccinated against it annually in case they die. Well done, humans.

I can categorically state that you don’t have flu. If you had flu you wouldn’t be able to rouse yourself from your bed to pick up the £50 note I left at the bottom of your stairs. You wouldn’t be able to broadcast sanctimonious updates about your condition on Facebook because the normally tolerable light that emanates from your smartphone’s screen would feel like the caustic, cornea-rupturing glare of ten thousand halogen bulbs. Best of all, you wouldn’t be able to talk to me about your symptoms. No, what you have is a cold.

Illness isn’t the only thing humans are bad at correctly categorising. Guessing a stranger’s age, for example, is an enterprise best left to idiots and sociopaths. But to find the area where our inability to categorise shines most luminously, you need only look to music.

Spectres are a Bristol-based four-piece who formed in Barnstaple after the fatal implosion of two erstwhile local favourites: LOAD.CLICK.SHOOT! and Fen Tigers. They are currently attracting hugely complimentary reviews in national music press (NME, Q Magazine, Uncut et al) as critics attempt to make sense of Spectres’ debut album, Dying, released 23rd February. While describing the North Devoners’ sound, Spectres have variously been tacked on to the psych scene, pioneered new-noise and adopted a new-krautrock sound, all with a deferential nod to nineties shoegaze. Sigh. What does that mean? Thanks for ruining my life, music journalists.

To be clear: Spectres sound like the eldritch, urgent soundtrack to your worst nightmares. They are equipped with blustering drums, revved up Joy Division basslines and two guitars that construct wiry walls of wailing feedback. Aural reference points – admittedly lazy ones – include Sonic Youth, The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine (they lurk in the murky shadows of each). Yet amid the layers of haunting feedback and crashing cymbals there’s an energy and urgency to Spectres that makes them a fiercely compelling proposition. Not least live. In fact, especially live – where every sound you hear is impossibly loud. Like when you have flu and that.

Good news, then. Because Spectres are homeward bound as part of their UK tour. They roll up to Golden Lion Tap in Barnstaple on February 21st – almost five years to the day since their first ever gig at The Rising Sun on Boutport Street. Support comes from unfathomably talented Bristolites The Naturals, whose leftfield experimentalism and musical astuteness is genuinely – really genuinely – mind-blowing. North Devon’s TripToTori open the bill.

Stop pretending you’ve got the flu and go. I’m sure you’ll be able to order some man-up juice at the bar.

CONTACT: Please talk to anyone but me, unless you have local music news: jharper[at]northdevonjournal.co.uk | @testforpulse