The Spinto Band
All Together In An Impulse
Feb 16, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
-
Welcome to Daytrotter
-
Give Me Just A Little M…
unreleased
We have always been knocked out by "Give Me Just A Little More Time" by the Chairman of the Board. This summer there were a few weeks where that song was following us no matter where we went, kind of like a spy. Anyhow, we decided we had just better play the song and maybe then it would leave us alone. Unfortunately, that only made things worse. We ended up playing it at every rehearsal, and as we did, we noticed it reminded us of a bunch of other songs. Whenever we have learned a new song we always like to sing "The Boys Are Back In Town" over it, just to see what happens. (This is how we wrote the bridge section to "Summer Grof"). To our amazement the Thin Lizzy vocal fit perfectly with "Give Me Just A Little More Time" and we decided to add it to the end of the song. Then, the horns started to remind us of "The Sweet Escape" by Gwen Stefani, and we mashed that song into the middle.
-
Later On
original version appears on Moonwink
I wrote this song imagining that Desi Arnaz would be singing it for one of the musical interludes in "I Love Lucy." I figured the verse would be a bit relaxed and upbeat like when he sang "Cuban Pete" and then the chorus would be more energetic and aggressive like when he sang "Babalu." During the "Oh oh oh later on" break I always pictured the Tropicana House Band stopping and Desi belting out "Oh Oh Oh" with his arms stretched out and maybe sliding a little across the dance floor. Coincidentally, the solo of this song was influenced by another Cuban. The piano solo on the original recording is my attempt to play like Rubén González.
-
Pumpkins & Paisley
original version appears on Moonwink
After realizing the lyrical content of the majority of my songs were consistently tinted with misery, resentment and other failures. This was an attempt to make something of an antithesis to those sentiments. I really enjoy the idea of abstract wholesomeness, like the couples on the covers of ReadyMade magazines.
-
Summer Grof
original version appears on Moonwink
"Summer Grof" is a song we dug up from a demo tape recorded in 2002. We used to have a television in our little basement studio, and while we were recording the song, there was a movie with Janeane "grof" Garofalo being broadcast. We were inspired and couldn't help but make an ode to her.
It's not good to know too much about the people making the music you find stimulating and to be accurately your taste. It's a disastrous way to work if you're to write about those people later on, needing to portray the players as their music depicts them instead of showing them as the people that they just happen to be. Then again, that is music and the deciphering of it, the greater understanding of it is often enhanced when personal moments get tangled up in the details like spaghetti and shoelaces and there becomes no reliable way to sort it all out of the messy mess. The way you feel and the way that the writers and makers of those songs have become more of a part of the exchange and the open discourse, the more the music essentially can mean and the richer it can be. Vacating the Spinto Band members and how we personally have gotten to know them over the years from both of their incredibly idiosyncratic and poppy albums is next to impossible and there's no better way to hear a record like Moonwink than to have it come at you on a personal level. Guitarist Jonathan Eaton has written about a number of albums on this very site and the ones that he chooses to do so with all bring with them references to either gardening or grilling out at the farmhouse that he and his Australian girlfriend rent. He takes to music that almost sets him in that frame of mind - to relax and to enjoy outdoor things - and sometimes he listens when he washes the dishes in his sink. Spending a week with lead singer Nick Krill in Philadelphia, during a sting of dastardly cold winter weather this past January, he shows himself as someone who is not a connoisseur of any one kind of sound or genre, but an appreciative listener of nearly everything under the sun, enthusiastically burning hand-compiled mixtapes of Cuban music featuring legends of Castro's land that were virtually never known in America, save for in some very fringe circles. He's refreshingly always upbeat, is skeptical of Kanye West, seems to have an affinity for gravitating toward beats and melodies no matter how odd, uses the term "snap" in place of a curse word better than anyone I've ever met and doesn't like touching door handles with his bare hands. And that's just two of the members of the band, bringing diverse personalities into the pot. All of those traits and treatments show themselves in the jangling and peppery songs that the Spintos are so good at creating. There's confidence in insecurity and there's adventure in precision in every one of the songs that the Delaware-based group puts together. There are coincidences, there is human conspiracy, there are surprise rainstorms, there's young and out-of-control puppy love, there's serious-found-the-one love, there's adoration for the tickly impulse that happens when a familiar song makes you want to sing louder than an airplane, there's splitting a six-pack, there's all-night drives, and there is a wealth of good times arranged for all to have inside of every Spinto song.
Spinto Band Official Site
Park The Van Records
