Profile: The Duke Spirit
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Amplifier, March-April 2006

“We’re definitely a band, like in the classic notion of a gang,” says Duke Spirit guitarist Luke Ford. “It is a gang and it is a show when we’re up there [on stage]. There’s a lot of energy coming from the whole thing. It’s definitely not ever about one person.” The “one person” it’s never about is singer Liela Moss, who has garnered notices that drive Ford nuts. “It’s always the same comparisons,” he says, “and they’re always quite lame comparisons, really. Liela doesn’t sound anything like Debbie Harry. It’s just she’s got blonde hair. But it’s always there. And she doesn’t sound anything like Nico, other than fronting a great band.”

In a way, all the Blondie chatter in the British press has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, reducing the London band down to its frontwoman with a narrow-minded focus. But if “The Duke Spirit is a gang!” doesn’t have the ring of “Blondie is a group!,” it’s just as true. On Cuts Across The Land (StarTime), which has finally made it to the western side of the Atlantic almost a year after its British release, Moss is but one component of the group’s sound, a fused-together electric strum which builds off of the work of that great band that Nico fronted.

There’s more that fuels the Duke Spirit than some simple Velvet Underground obsession, though. Ford lists Jerry Lee Lewis’s Live At The Star Club, Hamburg as one of his favorite albums: “You just feel the energy of that record.” Running through the band’s songs is a sinister undercurrent, similar to that of Sons And Daughters (a band Ford speaks quite highly of), but where that band slashes out jagged shards, the Duke Spirit is more subterranean and moody. With former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde in the producer’s chair, the cavernous sound also has echoes of girl-group-era visionaries Phil Spector and Shadow Morton. “It’s just a brilliant sound,” says Ford of Morton’s greatest clients, the Shangri-Las. “It’s kind of futuristic, in a way.”

For a wide-ranging array of what else inspires the band, you need look no further than the Duke’s Alphabet section of the band’s website. There, arrayed in a standard A-to-Z format, you’ll find such rock-‘n’-roll entries as William Faulkner and BBC wildlife documentarian David Attenborough amidst the Pixies, Bo Diddley and Exile On Main Street. “It felt kind of like it was supposed to be a bit fun and tongue-in-cheek,” says guitarist Luke Ford. “I feel it’s almost some sort of manifesto.”

Intentions declared, all that’s left is for the Duke Spirit to cut across the land that it has so far only visited for appearances at CMJ and South By Southwest, even if it means sacrificing some of the band’s mystique. “We wanted to create some sort of mystery,” says Ford, referring to the preference for 17th century English woodcuts over band photographs for artwork. “I suppose early on we liked the idea of being quite anonymous with our records, but then it’s hard to be when you’re then going out and playing live all over the place.”

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