The first impression you get from chatting to Spector is that being a breaking indie band on tour for the first time must be both intoxicatingly exciting and mind numbingly boring. Which might explain why the band, as unfocused in their chat as sugared up seven year olds at a birthday party, prove to be incredibly skittish interviewees. One minute they’re hunting on a laptop for internet evidence that Nicholas Cage is a vampire, the next lead singer Fred is comparing his songs to pokeballs. It all makes for an entertaining chat but a sometimes less than enlightening transcript.
The night I spoke to Spector backstage in The Duchess before taking to the stage they’ve only been at it for less than a week and already they seem both exhausted and wired. “It’s been awful, we’ve been drinking every night and getting really messy” says guitarist Christopher Burman. “Chris is on the hunt for a wife” interjects the be-suited and bespectacled Fred Macpherson, Spector front man and fittingly easily the chattiest. “We’re anti-groupies by default. On account of them not existing yet. Most of our groupies at the moment seem to be older men, which is nice as well…”
A curious mixture of swagger, knowing irony and geeky enthusiasm, Spector are pretty much indistinguishable from any other bunch of preppy young men, except perhaps with better suits. Entirely unbothered by the presence of me and my dictaphone backstage, they seem pretty much at ease with the curious limbo state of being poised on the brink of potentially career making experiences. Already hotly tipped in the 2012 critics polls, Spector only have a handful of singles to their name, having wrapped up recording on their debut album just a week ago.
What singles though. ‘Chevy Thunder’ is an irresistible, pumping, Springsteen echoing festival anthem waiting to happen; ‘Never Fade Away’ a lushly romantic, reverb drenched slice of indie rock; ‘Grey Shirt and Tie’ strewn with gorgeous synthesised bells and a charming 80’s sensibility. Although the influences are plentiful and obvious – Macpherson’s faux-geek styling and self-conscious wordiness are clearly modelled on Jarvis Cocker, the dense production indebted to the likes of Roxy Music and Ultra Vox – Spector wear these heady legacies lightly, with enough 
melodic power and foppish bombast to create compelling moments that justify the dizzying buzz.
Which is a good job because when I ask them to describe the pending album the best Macpherson can come up with is “jaunty, jaunty, jaunty” before giving in and playing me a couple of snippets on his laptop. Not exactly the hard sell. How was the recording process? “It’s never going to be over” Fred asserts ominously. “It’s like leaving the gas on in the house and then you light a cigarette and the whole thing goes up.” Now there’s an arresting metaphor. So, it could spontaneously combust at any minute? “It’s a gas leak. A musical gas leak. So be prepared to watch it blow, UK! Or poison you to death as you sleep.”
As I try to steward the conversation into a more relevant direction I feel sometimes more like a harassed lollipop lady trying to steward my wards away from danger than a writer. Nonetheless I do manage to get some telling soundbites off the band before the conversation tails off into more surreal nooks. Contrary to popular belief the band claim not be named after notorious genius producer Phil Spector, but when I try and get an alternative explanation the conversation somehow segues into a debate about whether Eastenders’ Phil Mitchell has ever killed anyone, and the thread gets lost. I wonder how they feel about the constant comparisons to musical luminaries such as Cocker, but they become oddly cagey when the subject is broached, with Macpherson offering simply a reticent “fine” in response. They’re much more comfortable when I ask what they actually listen to. “There’s going to be a mix we’re going to play before we go on, and that’s revealing,” says bassist Thomas Shickle. “It’s mainly my music.” “Is that a hand-made mix?” “Yeah, I made it in the van yesterday. They didn’t like it in Leeds.” “Did they throw things at you?” “There were definitely at least four people singing along to Taio Cruz. So there you go.”
The mix, which seems to mainly consist of early noughties R’n’B hits mixed in with random dubstep, is played in between acts later in the evening and receives a mixed, mainly perplexed response from the hipster crowd (for the record, I loved it). Shickle’s unashamedly populist playlist is indicative of the band’s relaxed view towards the occasionally stigmatic pop label. Macpherson insisted that the debut of ‘Chevy Thunder’ be introduced on Radio One by Harry Styles, and he makes no bones about being a One Direction fan. “Did you know that ‘That’s What Makes You Beautiful’ has just broken the top ten in America? They’re the first British boy band to break America since the Beatles,” he excitedly asserts. “I just like the state of British pop music now. It feels almost like a kid who’s had so many sweets, so much saccharine and artificial flavours that he’s just running around like punching their dad in the face or something.”
Later in their tour Spector are supporting Florence and The Machine, and Macpherson is similarly evangelical about Florence’s chart appeal. “She’s just a kind of modern artiste I guess, for want of a better word,” says Macpherson. “A pop star who’s not some sort of X Factor thing, but comes from the world of indie. She’s managed to come into the mainstream, and that’s a sort of cool, rare thing to happen… I respect that massively.” Macpherson makes no attempt to disguise his own ambitions for mainstream success. “We see ourselves as a pop band in that we see entertainment as something that is as valuable and important as art, as creativity. If we were making music solely for ourselves it would be different, but we’re making music for our audience, we want to entertain an audience whilst having fun and entertaining ourselves, but I think that’s the difference between a pop group and a group that exists with that idea that if people like us then fine, but we’re just doing it our way. I want lots of people to like our music so I think about that when I’m writing.”
Rather charmingly, when facing a serious question about their music, all pretence of bravura melts away, and they seem much younger. When I ask if Spector see themselves as a romantic band Macpherson seems rather flustered as he attempts to articulate his response. “The lyrics are always inspired by a kind of… I wouldn’t call it failed romance but a kind of… aborted love affair. Not aborted… not failed romance… what’s something when you don’t achieve… attempted romance I guess. It’s hard to be romantic in 2012.”
“A good way of having a physical embodiment of music is, I think, seeing Fred trying to be romantic” chips in guitarist Chris Burman. “Absolutely”, Macpherson agrees. “It ends miserably! It is good though, what I feel like is if you are in a relationship you go through things that are difficult and exciting and happy, it’s good then to take those experiences and try to use songs as kind of like talismans attaching them to you to try and deal with these situations. For example, if you decide to bludgeon me over the head with your Sony recorder, I could try and deal with that, I could write a song about it and then it would continue to sort of exist in the song…” Macpherson’s eyes light up as he hits upon a suitable simile – “it’s like a Pokéball in Pokémon!”- and the interview rapidly tails off into a spectacularly geeky discussion of the relative values of individual Pokémon, that dominates for a good few minutes before I eventually manage to steer the conversation back to the straight and narrow.
Spector may be positively foetal in career terms, but they’ve already had some memorable experiences. A particular highlight was their appearance on Later… With Jools Holland alongside such solid gold musical legends as Björk, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Noel Gallagher, but Macpherson claims to have been more impressed by the host. “He played piano on ‘Cool for Cats’, which is more than anyone who has ever been on the show has done. So he gets the last laugh.”
Do the band have any other burning ambitions for the rest of their career? “It’s not something that I want to do, it’s something that I know I’ll do. I’m going to meet Madonna,” insists Burman straight faced, “I’ve never met her but I know we’ll really get along, and when that happens I’ll know I’ve arrived.” Otherwise the band insists the plans just to make a lot of money then escape to a tax haven. “And I’ve signed us up for a three month stint in Las Vegas” Burman quips.
At this early stage it’s impossible to predict whether Spector will triumph in the mainstream or drown in their own hype. Only time, and the new album, will tell. Nonetheless, if they keep on making the sort of addictive, irresistible indie rock they’ve managed so far then they’re certainly in with a shot. But in the grubby backstage area of The Duchess, they seem to be doing their best to take each stage as it comes. As Macpherson quite rightly signs off, “right now there’s only one thing on my mind – and that’s rocking York to its very hinges!”