Indie-pop legends Spearmint are back with a new single, Senseless (A Stranger) b/w he Music They Love Us To Hate, which will be released on the 7th April on wiaiwya records, the first instalment of their final 7777777 singles club. Read all about it and preorder here.
Frontman Shirley Lee told me a bit more about how the single came about…
“About mid-way through 2017, John Jervis from Where It’s At Is Where You Are asked if Spearmint would do a record for this year’s singles club and we said yes. John is one of the people who’s always stood by the band and helped us out, so we were keen to contribute. I promised John he’d have two finished tracks by the end of the year.
“The ‘A Different Lifetime’ and ‘Jukebox‘ shows we did last year were quite demanding so I wanted to get them out of the way before thinking about how to get the tracks done. John came to the ‘Jukebox’ gig and I suddenly realised that there were only a few weeks left in 2017 and we hadn’t done anything about the songs. [Producer] JB also came along that night and he was really enthused by the show. So we had a chat and luckily he had some free time in December.
“I started doing a bit of writing, theoretically for a solo album, but the first two ideas I had seemed very Spearmint to me. So we had a rehearsal and tried them out with Si [Calnan, keys and vocals] recording them on his phone at the end of the session. Those recordings went to JB and we recorded at his studio in Brighton in December. It took four half-days including mixing I think.
“Si, Jim [Parsons, guitar] and Ronan [Larvor, drums] came to Brighton. Andy [Lewis, bass] wasn’t involved as he was playing for, or producing, about five other bands through that period. There is no bass on ‘The Music They Love Us To Hate’ (deliberately). Ronan plays two drum-tracks to make up for it. It was quite a quick song to record as there’s not much on it! Rather than explain the lyrics, I prefer people to draw their own conclusions.
“I had envisaged the single as a double A-side, but ‘Senseless (A Stranger)’ came out so well that it’s clearly the A-side on its own. JB and I had flashbacks to building ‘A Trip Into Space’ together – he got right into it straight away. Jim, JB and I all play bass, and all three are on the record at different points! I wanted the title to be ‘A Stranger’, but it became clear that everyone including the band will forever call it ‘Senseless’ so I went for a compromise.
“We finished the mixing and got it the tracks to John on New Year’s Eve – see we promised that he’d have them by the end of the year…”
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