Nearly a year after their self-titled LP - described by the band as "the sound of four kinda weird kids from the suburbs' dreams coming true" - premiered to rave review, SPINN are still as fresh and smart as the day they debuted. SPINN is Johnny Quinn, Andrew Power, Sean McLachlan, and Louis O'Reilly, a dreampop quartet from Liverpool.
On their debut, the band had this to say to Atwood Magazine, who interviewed frontman Quinn after the album's release in 2019:
The music and lyrics on this album were written by some awkward, skinny and frankly kind of weird looking lads who are from the suburbs of Liverpool and Birmingham...We just wrote what we feel to be true to our experiences growing up: anxiety, self loathing, falling in love, witnessing things fall apart, missing your friends – that’s what it’s about. It’d be good if some people might like it, and hopefully one day it’ll help a kid somewhere get their head around things, in the same way bands we love have done for us. That’s the goal.
They're the perfect band to quarantine yourself with during these incredibly uncertain times we're living in. There's something on their debut album for everyone - although their sound is consistent and soothing, every track differs lyrically and thematically. The majority of their songs are bass-forward, which is a quality I've found palliative to listen to while stuck at home - being able to focus in on the heartbeat of any song I'm listening to has helped whenever I feel overwhelmed, and every single song SPINN have put out has given that to me.
On their influences, Quinn told Glide Magazine, "Obviously The Smiths have influenced us as a whole, but individually we have a massive range on influences. Andy is into his shoe-gaze, and is always banging on about Ride. Sean has a lot of disco influences. Louis loves U2 and my lyrical influences come from The Cure and The Drums." It's easy to decipher these influences while listening to their music, but clear that the band have put their own SPINN on things (I literally could not resist) and made the influences into something entirely their own.
My favorite tracks of theirs are "It's Not Getting Better," "Believe It Or Not," and "Is There Something That I Missed?" If you're a fan of smaller indie groups like Ten Tonnes, Sea Girls, or Vistas, or bigger bands like Circa Waves or Sundara Karma, you'll love SPINN. They did have a pretty busy year of festival appearances ahead of them - including Y Not? in Pikehall and Hit The North in Newcastle - but given the current state of the world, I think it's safe to assume those won't be going on as planned. In the meantime, you can keep up with them on Twitter and Instagram, where they're still active and providing content, making playlists for fans, teaching them how to play their songs on guitar, and even cooking dinner with them over livestream.