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The Duke Spirit: Open Sea

The Duke Spirit creates the kind of record-collector rock that’s usually explained with mash-up descriptors that sound like they were written for a music-industry version of Robert Altman’s The Player.

“We’ve had some weird comparisons, like ‘Björk fronting Meat Is Murder-era Smiths,’” laughs guitarist Luke Ford, who grew up outside of London reading hype-afflicted U.K. music magazines. “One of our favorites was, ‘A crack whore fronting an Oasis tribute band.’ It wasn’t very positive, obviously, but we thought it was pretty funny. We almost put that on a sticker on the front of the album.”

But on an album like Neptune (Shangri-La Music), which was recorded in the California desert with Queens Of The Stone Age producer Chris Goss, it’s difficult not to point out obvious touchstones. Over the course of a dozen tracks, there are easily identifiable elements of Sonic Youth’s poppier moments, the neo-girl-group harmonies of the Raveonettes, shades of the shoegazers and cinematic ballads that would’ve made Lee Hazlewood proud. If those reference points weren’t obvious enough, the Duke Spirit’s website features photos of the band holding up albums by the Modern Lovers, Black Sabbath, Ronnie Spector and Sly And The Family Stone.

“It’s about sharing your influences with people who are interested in your band,” says Ford. “Some of my favorite artists did that, like the Jesus And Mary Chain or Thurston Moore. They would talk about people like Captain Beefheart or Suicide, and then I’d go out and buy the albums and be really into it. It’s not about being anorak-y or the kind of record collectors who want to prove how cool they are.”

Yes, Ford did say “anorak-y,” which is a British term that describes the High Fidelity crowd of übergeeks. “There’s a certain kind of guy who hangs out at the venue at 3 p.m. with records to be signed, waiting for the band to arrive,” he explains. “They’re all very sweet people, but they usually wear the same type of garments and might go out trainspotting later.”

Sure, but they’re also the people who would buy five different versions of a Duke Spirit single to get the various b-sides, aren’t they?

“Exactly,” says Ford. “And I’d never want to say a mean thing about those people. They really are sweet.”

Ford should know, because he’s met enough of them. The Duke Spirit takes great pride in its live show, which it brought to North America for the better part of 2006 while touring with Ted Leo And The Pharmacists.

“You can hide behind a MySpace page and have people write thousands of paragraphs about how cool you are,” says Ford. “But if you can’t play, you can’t connect and it’s all bullshit, really.”

—Michael Barclay