The Duke Spirit was built to last

The lead singer of London-based rockers the Duke Spirit is a formidable, ethereal stage presence; like a bona fide banshee who happens to have infused the spirit of Jim Morrison, maybe Satan too and plugged the lot into 10,000 volts of pure frenzied energy. In that sort of company, I wouldn't have expected to stand a chance. Fortunately, the manic sprite of the live shows turns out to be an eloquent, sassy individual, keen to dispel any impression that she is the focal point of the group.

"We've always said that we feel like a gang. That feeling is important in a group. We don't dig the sucking of corporate cock. I don't think it's cool for the girl in the band to be pushed to the front and have four guys who are very blurry. That sort of stuff has happened a lot since the early nineties. It's a) not very interesting and b) not very democratic. It's not where we're coming from at all. Other things are slightly out of my control. I don't think there's an exploitative slant to this. As a fan of music, I do think there can be a tendency to identify with the person who is singing the words, and delivering the lyrics. That's not to say I'm afraid of shaking my hips and being quite the female. Why not?"

The Duke Spirit, formed in 2003, releasing their debut album in 2005, have led a purgatorial existence since then, such have been their travails with the machinations of the record industry. Signing with one of the big boys, Polydor, turned out to be an exercise in sheer frustration, as Moss sighs. "Well we were all set and ready to make schedules to record the second album bloody ages ago but Polydor didn't respond very fast. It was the classic story really; they didn't want to drop us but they didn't want to put a new schedule in place. They were basically hedging their bets. So we just walked away, carried on writing songs and later found a much better home, a much more fertile ground to make records. Took a bloody long time though."

New album Neptune, is released on small label You Are Here this month and was produced by Queens of the Stone Age collaborator Chris Goss. "Goss is quite poetic, a mystical dude," says Moss. "He'd say, 'Man, this song is great as it is, and I'm loving your energy, but why don't we try to gild the lily?'. But he took himself with a pinch of salt when he said stuff like that. He just encouraged us to make little perforations in what we do, with certain sounds. In the past, we had a reductive approach to what we did. He'd be like, 'Fuck that, no way man. Sing another harmony, put those bells on it.' Decorating the edges of what we had done was definitely the right thing to do."

Debut album Cuts Across the Land saw frequent comparisons to alternative rock godfathers Sonic Youth and the Pixies. The same notion cannot be so easily applied to Neptune. Careful listening detects anything from the Velvet Underground through to Nick Cave, PJ Harvey and even several of the old blues legends. In other words, it's diverse enough to be entirely unique. Which should come as no surprise, as it's a musical approach encapsulated in the band's name, which Moss explains in parting.

"The Duke Spirit is an attitude; it's like a skip and a step. We thought of the nobility behind the creative process and it describes the pomp and grandeur that you can feel when you go to create or to perform. But it's also that uplifting, opulent sensation that you feel when you're in the midst of a show, whether performing or watching. You should be elevated, striving for the higher plane."

See, told you she was a little bit lizard king.