The Spinto Band

No matter how good or bad a band is, to truly stand out from the crowd it’s important to achieve one thing: inspire ridiculous literary allusions in the minds of down-trodden music journalists who long to be in your shoes.

So how’s this? The Spinto Band are a children’s story book, the players wide-eyed woodland animals that adorn instruments when they think no humans are looking, their music drawn from a place way up above the clouds (and everyone remembers just how cool a cloud-kingdom was in any fairy tale). With the stripped down emotional rhythms of The Rapture and the heady cartoonism of The Flaming Lips, their show is a pleasure to witness.



Arriving on stage at The Social nine years after the Mississippi six-piece made their first splash above the surface, like water from a mountain spring, their deceptively modest stage-presence is free from the trappings of city life, for their sight and sound is based solely in the natural realm of field and forest. That is not to say that they are tranquil or passive – as they bop about the stage at a frenetic pace playing quirky pogo-pop, it’s as if someone’s dropped six bouncy balls from the ceiling and we’re engrossed in the simple pleasure of trying to catch them before they get away.

They even look like cartoon animals; guitarist Nick Krull is a round-cheeked, perky squirrel, drummer Jeff Hobson a doe-eyed dear. Frontman Thomas Hughes is a bouncing frog that has lost control of his back legs, whilst guitarist Joe Hobson looks up to him adoringly like a small, attentive bluebird. Keyboardist Sam Hughes and guitarist Jon Eaton perch at either side of the enchanted band, looking down like wise old owls, making sure everything’s going to plan.


Songs like ‘Mountains’ and ‘Brown Boxes’ put smiles on the faces of eager onlookers, the atmosphere is jovial and pleasing. At times they transcend the boundaries of indie-alternative, hurling out hooks and drum rhythms that would put the Pop Charts to shame.

Tonight the Social is operating far from capacity, the usually large student contingent is reduced to a minority as most are at home revising during the exam period, but the band’s vibrant melodies and foot-stomping drum beats hop off the stage and in amongst the crowd who do turn up, making it seem full to the brim.


The Spinto Band are an entity to themselves and it’s a wonder to be let in on their secret world. Catch them while you can, before they shrink back into to the wilderness, leaving people scratching their heads as to whether a band so quietly special could have ever existed in the first place.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.