Spectres – Hindsight

Vancouver post-punkers Spectres released a new single on November 5 that upon closer inspection turns out to be a retrospective of the band's work from 2007 to the present. You don't need to be familiar with the band's discography to get this idea, just throw the title "Hindsight" into an online translator and the answer will be "Retrospective Look".

The record includes 12 tracks that have previously only been released as singles since the very first seven-inch - Cold War, Visions Of A New World.

The album unexpectedly kicks off with Lenin's "What Is Soviet Power?" speech. The band was interested in the cultural heritage of the early Soviet era before (read about it in the interview on our website), but I had no idea that it started right from the first song. However, don't let it get you down, dear commie friends, because "Lenin's work so easily done // Those who questioned put to the gun" and Spectres are more about asking questions than about bombarding us with "ideologically correct" statements. And in the track with the characteristic title "Pattern Recognition", which has been previously released only on a split with Arctic Flowers, they even summarize that "No government can bring you peace". 

Everything ends with the fresh 2021 singles To the Victor and Tell me, which are already fundamentally different from the earlier work. In the same clutch are the tracks Provincial Wake and Northern Towns, released before the last full-length Nostalgia (2020), united under the cover with the face of the girl from the Alliance's "In the Dawn" video. 

Somewhere in the middle of that are live versions of songs from Nothing To Nowhere (2012) and Utopia (2016), played for Los Angeles radio show Part Time Punks. It's fun to appreciate how the old songs sound in the band's new concept - melodic and chanted. Check out how, in the live version of Vertigo, vocalist Brian sings the line "more, more, more" where before he almost burst into screaming.

The album-compilation fully justifies its name: during the retrospective look we observe the smooth transition from the raw and gloomy g-beat to the light melancholic new-wave sound of the new period. The compilation album fully lives up to its name and will be a worthy piece in the collection of Vancouver Spetres fans, especially those who don't particularly follow the release of singles and only pay attention to their albums.

Listen to Spectres - Hindsight on Bandcamp.