Spearmint - My Missing Days

"What do you value? Do you really care about your job? It's not as if you work in a hospital or something. Would it really make any difference if you didn't go in today or tomorrow. Would they even notice. Is it just the money that matters? Is it that important that you have enough to choose what you do, what you eat, what you drink? What couldn't you live without and what wouldn't you miss at all?"

So many questions and it's so early in the morning. Spearmint's "Left Alone Among The Living" is an album which questions whether it's really worth finishing off this review. I mean in truth the world won't change one jot if I don't write this review or if I don't do tomorrow's interviews with Indie band A, B and C and Pop Act X, Y, Z. It's all irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and yet it's the passion that drives me to write each and every review rather than work in a call centre or some windowless factory. Yet if on yer uppers we'd all begrudgingly work in these places in order to put food on the table, in order to go out once a week and spend a days wages in 2 hours at the pub and we'd all work 50 weeks a year so we could have a 2 week holiday in some tacky holiday town. Spearmint are a band who have given up any hope of making money in the music industry and have decided to remain independent just because their love affair with music will never end. It doesn't make the fact that they are all working day jobs to pay the bills any easier, but it's this that fuels them to write tracks such as the aforementioned "Left Alone Among The Living" and "Don't Get Me Started".

The crucial thing about Spearmint is they have a clear idea of what they love and what they clearly hate (but often have to suffer in order to get by). Northern Soul, Paul Weller in the Jam and Style Council (but none of his solo albums), Pulp, Prince, Pure Pop and obscure indie references are all present and correct as they were on that classic single "Sweeping The Nation". It's like the band are living in Groundhog day, but that's fine because each time they live the same day over and over again they learn  just that little bit more. And "My Missing Days" may just be the moment where Spearmint have truly found themselves.

Alex McCann

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