Seattle quartet Spesh began when Michael McKinney and Sergio Mirazo got back together after the break-up of a previous band they were in, and soon after they were joined by Morgan Dixon and Brian Yeager. Heroically, the “About” section on their Facebook page just says “New Age Baggy”. Their forthcoming debut album, Famous World, shows that they’re not half-joking. Some of the band’s touchstones are classic Pacific Northwest Anglophile staples like the Psychedelic Furs, Morrissey, and Happy Mondays.
Famous World kicks off its own kind of Summer of ’89 with “Teflon”, driven by hi-hat-punishing propulsion and ascending chords, intertwining lines and a sense of overcast optimism. The band says of the song: “Teflon was written to capture a short blip in time which everyone experiences at least once, if not many times in their lives. A beautiful, confusing, sad, and wonderful feeling that cannot be articulated in words, but is more of a feeling. It was written in early January of 2018 in Seattle and was inspired by drab rainy weather, and the lack of opportunity to spend any significant amount of time outside. Where better to spend your time but in your own head with a friend from your past and a pretty tune?”
Spesh are the kind of band you’d think the city would have produced more of by this point, but perhaps that makes them all the more, yes, spesh. Famous World is being released this fall on September 28th by the new(ish) West Seattle-based Killroom Records, which was started a couple of years ago by KEXP DJ Troy Nelson and co-founder Ben Jenkins.