Album Review: The Spitfires - "Play For Today"

 

Play For Today is the final album from the Spitfires with the group confirming that they will be splitting up and moving on to new projects afterwards. To be fair, it feels like the right time - the group broke through a decade ago and briefly looked like being the spearheads of a new mod revival which never quite happened. They put out two pretty decent albums (2015's Response and 2016's A Thousand Times) but seemed to stall a bit after that with subsequent efforts lacking the spark of those first two.  

The irony is that Play For Today actually shows the band moving their sound forward comfortably - opener Save Me sounds like a politicised Stone Roses gone ska with its baggy dancebeat and horn section while the trippy flutes on Blaze of Glory take it into almost acid jazz territory although the scuzzy distorted vocals thankfully stop it drifting too near the dreaded shores of Jamiroquai et al and Don't Look At Me's paranoid tale of smalltown violence sees the group's love of the Specials come to the fore except while on their previous album, 2020's Life Worth Living, it seemed like they were trying to cop the formula a bit too obviously, here at least they sound like they're trying to put their own twist on it.

While it's not quite up to the standard of those excellent first two albums, Life Worth Living is at least the Spitfires' best album since those two and isn't a bad way for them to bow out at all from the pulsing disco beat of Did You Have To Go? and Promised Land to the gentle piano led Find My Way Back Home and Costa Del Mundane which sounds a bit like the theme from The Sweeney! There's actually an almost '80s pop feel to a lot of the songs (think bands like the Lotus Eaters or Fiction Factory) and maybe it's an indication of where Billy Sullivan will head next. It's maybe telling though that the best moment on here is with the squalling guitars and snarling aggression of Reap What You Sow which shows the band at their most energetic and confident.

All in all, this isn't a bad full stop on the Spitfires' career. They may never have quite reached the heights that some were predicting for them in the early days but they've had a respectable run and left a solid musical legacy behind them. We look forward to seeing what comes afterwards.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑🌑 (7/10)

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