The down to earth and gracious Spinto Band seem to have begun Vampire Weekend’s career. Previously dropped from a major label, Virgin “decided not to put out” their second album, “We got mountains of problems”, they sing in Mountains, one of the few bright lights in the first half of the set, and that’s never rung so true. They have since been signed to Fierce Panda and return to the British Isles with the support of The All New Adventures of Us, but it’s almost as though Vampire Weekend wrote The Spinto Band’s second album instead.
The ever-impressive local band The Fears opened the show with their dark, epic, Editors like sound followed by The All New Adventures of Us with their Arcade Fire Polyphonic Spree tinged folk. Bashfully, they peered from the stage that didn’t seem big enough for T.A.N.A.O.U’s numbers, or even big enough for their sheer depth of sound. They’re certainly a band to put on your radar. This left the cult, quirky O.C pop of The Spinto Band to entertain the typically sparse Sugarmill crowd.
After opening, strangely, with their latest single – and one of the best records of this year- Summer Grof, the set immediately seemed to take a downturn. Yet, had Summer Grof been released earlier in the year, it would have been certain to be a festival hit and the Sugarmill would be much fuller, but nothing’s that simple in the world of Spinto. Remarkably, they still remain humble and hopeful.
Not until nine songs in did the set really lift to have the quality that had been expected by the “buzz of 2006”, as drummer Jeff Hobson put it, their most recent visit to these shores. Songs such as the mandolin boosted Oh Mandy and the typical Spinto Band (slightly off-key) harmony and vocals of Late, the first really interesting chord sequence, showed just how good these Delaware youngsters could, or can, be. The problem was, it all seemed too obvious, you almost knew exactly where the songs were going.
There’s no fancy tour bus this time around though, they’re even selling their own merchandise, as Hobson is keen to tell me, they’ve paid for most of this tour and second album themselves. You can’t help but want them to fulfil their potential, but do we really need another jerky, cool American guitar band? I hope so, for their sake.
