Fred Macpherson, Jed Cullen, Danny Blandy and Tom Shickle are Spector. If you don’t already know the handsome Londoners, where have you been? Other than missing out, that is. Marking a move from straight up indie rock to an ever-evolving synth-led dream, today sees the release of their second album, Moth Boys. Already won over by All The Sad Young Men, Bad Boyfriend and Kyoto Garden, we’re pleased to present a first-look at the beautiful visuals for Cocktail Party.
“Cocktail Party started out as a demo Dev Hynes played me back in 2013,” explains Fred. “We both loved the track but I wasn’t sure whether it would work on a Spector album at that point and we both kind of forgot about it.” Fast forward a year and Danny heard the track on Fred’s laptop and insisted they record it. Dev had lost the original stems (good one, Dev!) so the boys rebuilt it bit by bit and merged it with the outro to a track called Heads, which didn’t make the album cut. “Dev wrote the lyrics for the first half, inspired by the TS Eliot play of the same name and I wrote the lyrics to the second half on a plane to New York. The slap bass solo’s the best bit though,” he quite rightly adds.
Shot by Spector’s bassist Tom entirely on his iPhone, the video was a spur of the moment sort of thing captured at a friend’s wedding on Harbor Island in the Bahamas. “I was surrounded by excess; excessive beauty, a wealth of luxury but with old friends and new. The setting was incredible and seemed to be apt for the lyrical themes of the song”. He felt inspired by his new environment and the fact that he was “listening to a lot of Drake and feeling like I was in Duran Duran” he got out the waterproof casing and set his iPhone camera to black and white. Taking the sun-saturated colour away from the tropical paradise gives the footage the feeling of unease matched in the lyrics and, like the rest of the album, the video is a beauty. Keep an eye out for i-D favourites Molly Goddard and Adwoa Aboah! Shout out to Tom’s mates Victoria and Michael for getting married/facilitating the video!
Spector‘s Moth Boys is out today, 21st August, on Fiction Records