Spearmint – A Week Away (Special Edition)

To mark the 10 year anniversary of the release of their debut album A Week Away, indie also-rans Spearmint have put together a special edition for re-release comprising the original album, a new seven song EP Life in Reverse and four extra tracks. One of those bands that seem to be held in greater regard than has ever been reflected in record sales, the resulting 24 track Special Edition is a long and detailed induction course for the new listener, as well as a nostalgia-fest for those who were there with the band for its original outing.To these fresh ears, only a couple of tracks stand out on the album proper as bearing repeated listening. ‘Sweeping The Nation’, if you forgive the slightly hammy spoken word intro (as also used in ‘We’re Going Out’ and ‘A Trip Into Space’) and the rather crass inclusion of Spearmint front man Shirley Lee’s previous band (Laverne and Shirley) in the list of “some of the best bands in the country”, is an earnest plea for indie music’s underdogs, with a likeable tune to accompany it. Better yet is ‘We’re Going Out’: it is hard not to be uplifted by a song featuring lyrics such as “Forget the money, we’ll manage, whatever / We’re going out”, especially when they’re supported by appropriately upward-sweeping music, the combination of which manages to quite perfectly nail the “yeah, fuck it” exuberance of something as simple yet excellent as a spontaneous, ill-afforded yet vital night out.Truth be told, though, bar these two tracks, and a couple of highlights from the new EP (the short yet perfectly formed ‘My Birthday Present To Myself’, the amiable ‘Come On Feel The Lemonheads’) there is little else of sustained (or sustaining) interest. The kind of indie-pop-meets-blue-eyed-soul, (with a few tentative forays into funk) that predominates musically is pretty limp, and the constant pop-cultural references - “Showaddywaddy at the Royal Hall” (‘Isn’t It Great To Be Alive’), or “lying in bed all day listening to ‘Being With You’” (‘A Third Of My Life’), or “Playing ‘For Once In My Life’ really loud” (‘Making You Laugh’) ”“ grate. They also have a habit of singing about themselves: gigging, being in a band, falling out with other band members, etc, which really isn’t as much fun for to hear about as it probably was for the band themselves to live through and sing about.Several tracks suffer from having no or few obvious hooks, and are pretty much unmemorable (as I write, I still have difficulty remembering how ‘Start Again’, say, or ‘A Trip Into Space’, or ‘You Are Still My Brother’ go). Others are confusingly incoherent, in a couple of cases sounding as if two different tracks, or melodies, have been awkwardly sandwiched together into one (‘A Week Away’, It Won’t Be Long Now’). Often the overall effect, and certainly the cumulative effect of 24 tracks’ worth of this stuff is just, well, a little wet.In short, then, I think this is probably going to be one of those albums that is snapped up by long-term Spearmint and/or Shirley Lee fans ”“ for nostalgia reasons, for the new EP and the four extra tracks at the end. A few extra fans may have been enlisted by the name-check that the band is given in Zooey Deschanel’s movie 500 Days Of Summer. It is difficult, however, to see what it might have to offer a wider audience, suffering as it does from its overlong running time and the lack of diversity in the music that it contains

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