There are only two words other than "Spitfires" and "Mayflowers" that accurately describe Spitfires & Mayflowers: sexy party.
It's a result of the lithe basslines of Andy, the rugged guitar/trumpet/keyboard of Henry, the pounding rhythm of Tim and the considerate guitar of Jose.
It wasn't always this way.
They had all done it a couple times, sure. Andy and Tim in Barrie's The Secret Seven, Jose and Henry in Mill Bay's Ephemeral. But none of them had really made music before. They were four innocents, confused, dirty and aimless.
But then a wondrous happening occurred. In September 2002 the four wandered down a Borden St. back alley, broke two fenceposts (Andy could have fit through one), snuck into a backyard and locked themselves in a shed for the winter. They had no food. They had no water. They had no experience.
What they did have was a broken guitar, a shoddy guitar, a forgotten drum kit and a jazz bass. As the weeks passed, the group became more like wolves than boys. Conversation all but gave way to shrieks and howls. Henry, in particular, became more feral by the day.
When the days became so long that the setting and rising of the sun no longer marked the passage of time, Tim took the two slender pieces of wood he had gnawed from tree roots discovered underfoot and, in a display of beastly fury, began attacking the drums that surrounded him. Henry, Andy and Jose looked up, intrigued.
Andy responded with basslines so innovative and fluid that Jose and Henry were simultaneously soothed and enraptured. Their only recourse was to amplify the instruments Jose had been clinging to in his sleep for human comfort, and join their brethren in the swelling explosion of sound.
Soon the cries, poppy hooks, country twangs, dancey beats and note-perfect harmonies became a cacophony heard all through the night, under the darkest skies with the brightest moons. The sound would stop, occasionally, replaced by brief yelps of...satisfaction.
Released from the winter shed, the sound fled through the streets like deer, trampling up staircases and onto stages, running wildly amidst bands like The Arcade Fire, The Deadly Snakes and The Fiery Furnaces.
Concert-goers danced, cheered and clapped with such force and precision that a million million fairies were brought back to life, as they hollered "You guys sound like Pavement and Superchunk and The Cure!"
The boys, nay, the men, had grown together in the closest of ways.
Their unholy child - an aural record of their misdeeds - is a Triumph.
