THE SPINTO BAND ARE BEING TOUTED AS THE NEXT BIG THING. AS THEY GET READY TO SUPPORT CURRENT FLAVOUR OF THE MONTH THE ARCTIC MONKEYS ON TOUR, THEY TALK TO BRIAN BOYD
SOMEWHERE deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, a young man is looking for something in his garage but finds something else instead. He finds some Cracker Jack boxes with lyrics written on the inside of them. The boxes belong to a late guitar player. The young man brings them back to his friends in Delaware (city motto: "A Place To Be Somebody"). They pore over the lyrics and decide to form a band. The late guitarist's name is Roy Spinto; the band call themselves The Spinto Band.
"We're getting into so much trouble over that story," says Spinto Band guitarist Jon Eaton. "It was Nick from the band who found the lyrics. But now all we're getting is 'you're a bunch of liars'. People just don't believe the story. We're kind of sorry we mentioned it now. Could you do me a favour and not mention the whole thing in your article?" Sorry dude, too late.
The Spinto Band are a young sextet who are causing a bit of a fuss. One listen to their just released debut album, Nice and Nicely Done, explains why. Here's a band who deal in very arresting alterno-pop. They sound like a '60s bubblegum group with an art-rock edge. At a considerable push, you'd locate them nearer the Yo La Tengo end of the spectrum than The Killers end. There's a fair dash of Pavement in there too (and Fountains Of Wayne), but the sound is leavened by some tight harmonies and a beguiling, idiosyncratic approach. It sort of makes sense when they explain they got their first real bunch of gigs supporting the Trachtenberg Family Sideshow Players.
"We really don't mind being explained in terms of other bands," says Eaton. "Some of the comparisons are quite flattering - we're all big fans of Pavement - but the only thing I don't like is when we get lumped in with those Pitchfork-type bands - Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Sure, Pitchfork reviewed us really well, but we've nothing in common with them. It's funny you mentioned bubblegum pop because how we prefer to describe ourselves is as a 'lollipop' band. If we had an ambition, it would be to have a real genre called Lollipop, so when you went in to record shops you'd have all the heavy metal albums and so on and then somewhere at the back of the store you'd have the Lollipop section. That would be us and Kelly Clarkson. I'm glad we've settled on a term to describe our music. Before, if I went to the guitar shop to buy some guitar strings, the guy behind the counter would be going 'Are you in a band? What do you sound like?' and I'd have to run away because I wouldn't be able to describe what we do."
All childhood friends, the band have been around for a long time - but then they did start when the oldest member was 16 and the youngest was only 11.
"It just went from listening to music together to playing music together," says Eaton. "We focused on the recording from early on. In fact, we've self-released eight albums already. They were all recorded in our small basement studio in Delaware. We never had a distribution deal, though. We'd sell the albums at gigs or through our website. We also had them up on the www.MP3.com site, but that's not there anymore."
Now with an average band age in the early 20s, the group's work has been circumscribed by various members still being at school/college and the concomitant problem of physically getting all six together at one time.
"We've had to arrange tours around school breaks and stuff like that," Eaton says. "And because different people were being educated in different cities, we had to take out a map and find a convenient midway place to meet up, which in our case happened to be New York."
With their songs spreading all over the internet, the band travelled to the UK in October of last year in search of a record deal. They played in the well-known Camden Town indie dive The Dublin Castle. The gig was notable for the fact that it attracted the biggest A&R crowd since the first Arctic Monkeys London gig.
"It was a frenzy," says Eaton. "We knew there were loads of A&R people there because we saw lots of guys in leather jackets with greying hair. It was just one big record company blitz. We really couldn't take it that seriously - but we did enjoy it."
Virgin put them into the studio to record a double A-side single and then took up the option of releasing the first album proper. The resultant Nice and Nicely Done is a marvellous affair - and it comes complete with at least one classic-in-waiting - the mandolin and theremin-drenched song Oh Mandy (which now ranks as the best song about a girl called Mandy - sorry Mr Manilow). And if you're into these sort of things, you'll find Nice and Nicely Done to be a very tremolo affair.
The band are just about to begin a US tour with the Arctic Monkeys - a tour that sold out within minutes. Because a lot of their fans wrote to them complaining that they couldn't get tickets because of the fuss surrounding the Monkeys, The Spinto Band have decided on a novel competition in which the two winning entries will get to support them on various dates of the tour.
"We're telling new bands to go to our website and there they'll find a picture of Roy Spinto, the man who started all this for us," says Eaton. "They have to print off the picture and take a picture of themselves wearing the Roy Spinto mask. The best two entries will be joining us on the tour. I know it's not very sophisticated . . . but it's all we could think of."
Nice and Nicely Done is available now on the Virgin label
