When Fred Macpherson starts talking, it’s not quite the ‘Fred’ I’m expecting. I imagine the Fred I saw at gigs in my late teens, flamboyant and ostentatious, willing and ready to whip out a comb and preen himself at any moment on stage with self-conscience pretentiousness. I imagine the nominee for ‘Best Twitter’ and ‘Villain of the Year’ at the 2013 NME awards. But this frontman seems different: the charisma’s all there, but it’s quieter than I anticipated.
Formed in 2011 and nominated for the BBC’s Sound of 2012 poll, Spector’s debut album Enjoy It While It Lasts did pretty well. With new singles ‘All the Sad Young Men’ (premiered as Zane Lowe’s ‘Hottest Record in the World’) and ‘Bad Boyfriend’ out, a second album is imminent. Perhaps Macpherson’s vaguely subdued tone is the result of the pencil-pushing that’s preoccupying the band in the run-up to the release of their as-yet-untitled album. When Macpherson mentions they’re trying to get the artwork sorted I wonder if they’ve ever considered producing something themselves, but he confesses they find it hard enough to design a t-shirt, let alone an album cover. Three years since the release of their debut album, it doesn’t seem that Spector have felt the traditional rush to get a follow-up out.
Having read that the new album is all about honesty, I wonder if that’s made it quite a selfindulgent project. Macpherson doesn’t dismiss the idea, but he argues that something like therapy also indulges the self and in the process might make you a more bearable person. He thinks this album’s more honest than its predecessor and explains that he finds it easier to be honest through lyrics than talking, maybe even with a close friend.
Our conversation moves to talk of Macpherson’s hometown, London. Whilst he says he’ll always feel like a Londoner, it’s clear that he feels a growing dissatisfaction, even disillusionment with his city, “It does feel like it’s being socially-cleansed and all of the fun bits of it are being closed and phased out.” He highlights how London’s once vibrant musical culture is being marginalised to make way for the expensive, often empty flats of the corporate elite. Looking ahead to five years under a Tory government, Macpherson seems pretty bleak.
Responding to suggestions from some of his contemporaries that they have no interest in politics, he wrote an article for Q Magazine in the run up to the general election arguing that even if musicians do not wish to be overtly political in their music, they should not discourage their fans from voting. I wonder if Spector’s music is going to become more political. Fred agrees it hasn’t been so far (“perhaps that’s the indulgence”) but it hasn’t been a conscious decision.
He doesn’t feel a responsibility to write about anything other than what he feels like writing about, but politics has been increasingly playing on his mind. “I think that this generation musically needs to be more politicised and I think it should be a conversation that’s happening and I’ve only just realised in the last two years that that’s where the responsibility might be, just to keep the conversation going for young people and make people realise it’s relevant if they aren’t already aware of it.”
So much of Spector’s music so far seems to have involved reliving their youth and a romanticisation of the past. Macpherson admits he does feel time slipping away from him, but reasons that as soon as you write about something it’s in the past and that music itself adds an instant melodrama. He mentions older lyricists like Nick Cave and Tom Waits and his hopes still to be making music in his 60s when it will make more sense and not just be about, ‘Oh, I went to this party, I met this girl’.
Talking to Macpherson, I’m excited about Spector’s new album. But perhaps I’m even more interested to see what they do further down the line. Macpherson’s great self-awareness and reflection is charming. As he puts it, “There’s more to write about, I’m just only starting to experience it”.
