Indie-rockers Spencer may be based in Zurich, but the sounds on their fourth studio album We Built This Mountain Just to See the Sunrise are often British in nature. Discontented with the spectrum of indie music in Switzerland, the group have delved into the British music scene of the 90s to draw inspiration for this latest release, in an attempt to craft a more global sound. Echoes of Oasis, Blur and even slightly more modern groups like Editors can be heard throughout the record. Couple these influences with production from Reto Peter, the man behind Greenday’s American Idiot, and you’ve got something of a transatlantic twang characterising the album.
The record opens with its first single, ‘Hidden From The Sun’, setting the tone for proceedings. The guitars jangle and the bass chugs along through the verse before hitting a noisy chorus. Quiet verses and big choruses have long been a staple of indie-rock and Spencer are no exception to this. Often the choruses veer toward the discordant, though, and the production leaves something to be desired, lacking any real dynamic range or a sense of melody. This a repeated issue throughout the album, with tracks like ‘Utopia’, ‘City Lights’ and ‘Voyage’ encountering the same issues.
The overt loudness of the choruses is a pity, as it relegates those moments that should serve as highlights to nothing more than noisy distractions from the more interesting melodies which prelude them. Notably, ‘Utopia’ opens with a grooving bassline reminiscent of The Strokes in their heyday, accompanied by a nice, scratching guitar riff, before losing sight of its identity by stretching for an anthemic chorus and falling just short.
‘Saturday Shoes’ is a highlight, building up from a funky lead guitar riff and hitting the mark with an Oasis-esque chorus, harking back to the glory days of Britpop in the mid-90s. This track kicks off the most interesting stretch of songs on the album, as Spencer abandon the indie-rock formula of the opening stages to some extent. ‘City Lights’ plays down the lead guitar and lets the rhythm section take centre-stage for much of the track, before giving way to ‘Cruel’, comfortably the longest track on the album at around seven minutes. After the high-octane rock which has defined the album up to this point, ‘Cruel’ marks a welcome moment of reflection, and experimentation, slowly working its way from a sombre, acoustic-guitar intro toward a cacophony of backing vocals and chaotic drumming in the closing minutes.
‘Voyage’ features a more sinister vocal turn from lead singer Leo Niessner as he delivers his lyrics over a fuzzed-up bass guitar, almost veering into Marilyn Manson territory with the menace he injects into his voice. Unfortunately, for all the promise of its intro and the desire to experiment on show in the latter third of the song, ‘Voyage’ falls victim to the group’s tendency toward a cluttered chorus. After hinting at something a bit more diverse in the middle of the album, Spencer revert back to the indie-rock formula of the opening tracks for the climax of We Built This Mountain Just to See the Sunrise. ‘Dividing Lines’, ‘Fireworks’ and ‘Harry’s Still Sad’ suggest, at some points, influence from more contemporary acts like Interpol and Wild Beasts, but in the end they fall victim to the over-familiarity of their structure and composition.
Although there’s nothing wrong with wearing your influences on your sleeve, Spencer appear to have become over-dependent on their predecessors for the creation of this album. Moments of experimentation and inventive song-writing are few and far between, and despite hinting at some real promise here and there, We Built This Mountain Just to See the Sunrise is nothing we haven’t heard before. In straining to replicate the groups that they admire, Spencer have lost sight of their own identity and failed to imprint this record with a real sense of self. It’s a perfectly competent set of indie-rock songs, but it’s been done, to greater effect, by those who have come before.
