When it comes to no-holds-barred rock n’ roll, very few bands in the current music landscape are doing it while having nearly as much fun as Spiritual Cramp. Hailing from San Francisco, California, the Golden City band are coming back around with their sophomore effort that feels as live and eccentric as ever.
As the Queens of the Stone Age-tinged radio introduction inducts us into the sound of ‘RUDE’, the opening track ‘I’m An Anarchist’ bursts into life, and the rich bass tones wash over vocalist Michael Bingham’s crisp delivery.
This whirlwind album features several stops, declarations of love for San Francisco come on ‘Go Back Home’ where Bingham declares the city for himself and ‘Young Offenders’, the frontman confidently stating that it’s “Where everyday is the best day of my life”.
Pursuits of love are thrown back and forth on “You’ve Got My Number”, featuring a duet from Sharon Van Etten, whose voice slots effortlessly amongst Bingham’s. Meanwhile, ‘At My Funeral’ highlights some of the band’s infamous wit, with comical one-liners like “I went to your funeral and no one even knew you”, ensuring the progression of their sound isn’t restricting their humour in any way.
The album is sonically bright through much of its duration, even with much of the contrasting lyrical content, such as the self-deprecation contained on “I Hate The Way I Look”. Despite this, it still manages to remain rousing and catchy. Although this album draws much more heavily on the band’s wider influences from across the worlds of Ska, Hip-Hop, and Dub, it’s certainly much more pastiche than parody, and the band’s influences entwine well without resulting in an awkward saturation of their ludicrous smile-inducing sound.
The acoustic guitar-lined ‘New Religion’ demonstrates that Bingham et al are just as spiritually astray as the rest of us, the lines of “I never said that I knew anything I’m just as lost as you. The depths of my soul have been crying out to me” providing a somewhat crushing penultimate track to what is an otherwise jovial album.
Concluding track ‘People Don’t Change’ strips away Bingham’s driven facade, leading him to a rather introspective level of questioning: “People can change, and why can’t I?”. It’s a rather emotional ending, backed by a sonic melting pot of synths and horns that perfectly epitomise the Spiritual Cramp’s grandeur.
RUDE is not an album that tears up the band’s pre-existing and well-developed formula, but who cares when it’s as good as this?
