PRESS RELEASES: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. At best, they supply some useful background information on a new band you may not know a lot about. At worst they're brim full of irrelevant waffle. Essex band Spirit Walker's blurb walks a very fine line between the former and the latter - veering from hard facts to Smash Hits-style run-downs of each member's likes and dislikes. Mercifully, it stops short of listing their favourite colours.
So, for the record, Spirit Walker frontman Jason Swindle is 24 years old, he likes "comedy and food", dislikes "war", and is motivated by "women and sunlight". Hmm. Would this sex-and-photosynthesis junkie care to explain himself?
"It was a strange time of the day when I got the phone call," the singer protests.
What was he doing, watching two Venus flytraps having it off?
"How did you know that?" he exclaims, horrified at having been rumbled. "No, we didn't realise all this stuff was going to be released as part of a press release. Some people who work for us just phoned up and asked us a few questions over two minutes."
And they never queried it? A job in the CIA beckons!
Spirit Walker's debut single 'Man Made' is a string-driven, balladic thing, produced by famed percussionist Noel Eccles and engineered by Tim Martin, two veterans of the Irish music industry. So how did the three Essex boys hook up with these Paddies with attitude?
"We've all got Irish roots," Jason explains. "Noel wasn't easy to get, but working with him was brilliant. He's a rough-cut diamond. After four days in the studio, all the stories started coming out."
It's quite a gamble releasing a five-minute ballad as a first single, no?
"It is," agrees Jason. "There was no strategy behind it whatsoever. But as a song, it was the one that I never got bored of playing, and everyone who heard it was blown away by it."
Did it ever occur to Jason that the hookline, "My life's man made," might annoy hardcore feminists and militant matriarchs alike?
"Well, the mothers don't know where we come from," he responds, "and the feminists can bloody shut up and get over it as well, you know what I mean? Find a new man!"
Bloody hell! That's his status as Most Evolved Essex Man Of 1998 scuppered. And while we're talking gender, as all three Hot Press readers who had the patience to trawl through my singles reviews in the last issue will be aware, the cover of 'Man-Made' features a rather gratuitous headshot of a blonde Sharon Ni Bheolain lookalike. I say gratuitous because said image, while undoubtedly being easy on the eye, seems to bear no relevance to either the song or the band. Explain yourself, Mr. Swindle!
"We actually just met her walking down the street," the singer admits. "We didn't know she was a model, she was just waiting to get a cab in London, and we walked up and spoke to her."
Better men have been slapped for less. But hang on, here comes "base guitarist" Mike Ogilvie (Likes: music, relaxing with friends, working out. Dislikes: getting up early. Who does he most admire? Sting!).
So Mike, explain your love for the one that Trudie Styler calls Marathon Man.
"I've admired him for many years," the four-string slinger confesses. "The first bassline I ever learned was 'Walking On the Moon'."
You're not one of those dreaded Turkey Nodders by any chance are you, Mike?
"Naw, I'm a bit of a groover."
Thank God for that. n
* Spirit Walker's debut single 'Man Made' is out now on 21C Records.