The Spook School @ SWG3, Glasgow, 8 Dec
The Spook School make a glorious, goofy return to celebrate the 10th anniversary of debut album Dress Up
Indie-pop group The Spook School, who formed in 2011 and called it quits in 2019, have reunited for two nights only – The Dome in London on 16 December and tonight at SWG3 – and there’s more than a whiff of silliness in the air. Donning matching shorts and shirts, and performing on a stage decorated with signs referring to supermarket aisles and tinned foods, they keep talking about "the moon" and "the big shop". While this may seem bizarre to anyone not familiar with the band, it’s a delight to the fans filling SWG3 this evening. It’s all a big in-joke – when the band played their final gig at Glasgow’s Art School in 2019, they said they were blasting off to the moon to become its first "musical residents". Now they're back, ostensibly to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of their debut album Dress Up, but really to do "the big shop" on Earth before zooming off back into space again.
This sense of goofy, light-hearted theatricality characterises The Spook School experience. “Don’t think of it as a gig, think of it as a children's panto,” jokes drummer Niall McCamley, and sometimes it really does feel like that (the band reportedly met through Edinburgh University’s comedy society). The gregarious McCamley is genuinely funny – keeping up a running commentary on the "big shop", at one point shouting, "When was the last time drummers took control of the microphone?!" – but still, all the silliness could risk getting a bit tiresome for some if it didn’t align in such an interesting way with the music.
Image: The Spook School @ SWG3, Glasgow, 8 Dec by Stephen Mitchell
The Spook School are masters at pairing humour and upbeat, indie-twee melodies with emotionally frank, sometimes even devastating, lyrics. It’s like a gut punch when, at the end of the cheery-sounding, jangly guitar track Body, vocalists Nye and Adam Todd question: ‘Are you okay now? / Do you feel alright? / Why did you say / You want to die?’ A spirit of resistance is woven through these perky pop tunes too, most bluntly on the joyfully defiant Still Alive. “We’re still alive!” shouts Nye, before launching into the track with its catchy refrain (‘Fuck you, I’m still alive’) to huge cheers from the audience.