Spiritual Cramp – ‘Spiritual Cramp’ album review: punk’s bite meets indie introspection
Spiritual Cramp have achieved the impressive feat of cherry-picking from wide-ranging inspirations and emerging with their own unique, anthemic sound. Drawing from post-punk, hardcore, and indie, the tracks on their self-titled debut make the grit of punk accessible without ever compromising its spirit. Just like their forebears, much has been made of how the San Francisco six-piece dress. Fred Perry’s and Harrington jackets abound, and before hearing Michael Bingham’s vocals, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were British.
That style gives way to swagger on the album. They make their presence known from the offset with a robotic warning: “You are now watching Spiritual Cramp television,” which is set to a fuzzed-out reggae beat that feels like a nod to their days playing Oi! It suggests confidence, instructing listeners to ready themselves for an onslaught of sound instead of waiting for them to decide to tune in. As far as mission statements go, the fiery riffs and low growl of the vocals on the opener ‘Blowback’ are dazzlingly effective, capturing Spiritual Cramp’s sound in less than three minutes.
Since their 2016 inception, they’ve released a handful of EPs and 7-inches, but this record feels like them arriving as the finished product. When Bingham turns his snarl up full throttle, often the rage isn’t aimed outwards. For such a biting sound, at times reminiscent of The Skids and The Clash, the introspection is striking – four tracks in, and there’s a love song.
‘Herbert’s On Holiday’, as it’s delicately put in a press release, is about “how the singer’s sad-sack-of-shit life was saved by his wife”. Self-pity and insecurity colour the song, but the frankness saves it from being tragic, and its driving beat saves it from being sappy. “I thought I was gonna die,” confesses Bingham. “Thought I’d live a lonely and pathetic life / Caught up in the lines below the water and the waters getting hotter / And the walls kept closing in,” the claustrophobia reinforced by a tight, proto-punkish guitar line.
Though their sound can drift into the indie rock realm in more subdued moments – brief as they are – the lyrics are always direct and incisive, which gels nicely with the short runtime. Spiritual Cramp have often taken it upon themselves to rally against the police and the government, drawing obvious parallels to working-class sentiments that appear in 1970s two-tone and punk. They also take aim at a different kind of oppressor, which sometimes means themselves, other times meaning addiction.
The ten-track offering wastes no time, treating each sub-three-minute song as an opportunity to cycle through various sounds with as much intensity as possible. On the likes of ‘Can I Borrow Your Lighter’ and ‘Addict’, that is most decisively punk, but flashes of a more meat and potatoes brand of rock rear their head, as does the early aughts indie sound on ‘Catch A Hot One’.
The way they ricochet between syncopated punk and far more polished beats shouldn’t work at all, but it does. Every word, groove, and beat feels painstakingly intentional, done with confidence, but not overproduced to the point they lose their core sound. Eminently cool, their assured debut sets personal insecurities to driving, anthemic beats that chime with universal anxieties.
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