The Spitfires: Response

Watford quartet’s debut ploughs a familiar furrow.

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The Fred Perrys, severe haircuts and distinct lack of facial foliage immediately ties this Home Counties mob’s subcultural colours to a certain mast.

So when singer Billy Sullivan’s strikingly Weller-esque voice delivers a snarling proletarian polemic against the daily grind on Disciples, you’re expecting an album of few surprises.

Thankfully, The Spitfires’ sonic palette broadens considerably after that, as they take in acoustic introspection and Mariachi horns (Serenade Pt 1), string-drenched soul-pop (Spoke Too Soon) and ska-punk (Words To Say) inbetween jagged sub-Jam jags of high-octane ebullience.

The kitchen sink pen picture of 4am also suggests Sullivan is no slouch as a lyricist. All they need now is a couple more really strong tunes to permanently transcend their target-badged heritage.

Classic Rock 214: New albums M-Z

Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.