Spector’s second album has taken an awfully long time to reach us – its first two singles emerged in December and February; the album itself went out to reviewers in late spring – but only in one of this year’s slowest weeks is it finally emerging. That’s a shame, because it’s a bold and confident record that deserves equally bold and confident backing – Fred Macpherson sounds more Ian Curtislike than ever, and his sharp, witty lyrics are set against bold, chrome 80s melodies – “Where we’re going we don’t need roads / Set menus, or two-for-one codes,” he insists on Stay High; “I heard you started rolling with an older man / Who knows European cities like the back of his hand / He bought you a necklace and a flight to Japan / Fuck him,” offers West End. But it also sounds as if he’s tired of being the next-big-thing-who-hasn’t-got-that-big-actually. In All the Sad Young Men he’s “getting bored of all these songs I write, and the people I become”. Moth Boys sounds like a certain kind of mainstream – not the mainstream of arenas and No 1s, but that of groups of whom it will always be said, “How come they never got huge?”
