Some bands use their Web sites to provide links to a few of their favourite contemporaries. The Duke Spirit goes a step further. Click on "duke's alphabet," and you're taken to a page listing off idols and influences for every letter from A-Z.
It's a disparate list, with a heavy influence on acts who were in their prime long before the Duke Spirit's members took their first breath. And it goes part and parcel with how the band sees its role in the rock world.
The list, singer Liela Moss explains, is about helping younger fans understand there's more to rock 'n' roll than whoever's gracing the latest magazine cover. "You just open up these doors to different networks," she says. "We thought it's the most responsible thing to do - get kids into other stuff."
But it's for seasoned music fans already eschewing the trendy choices of England's influential NME - for which the Duke Spirit hold particular disdain, blaming it for everything from flash-in-the-pan flops to the dearth of women in Britrock - that the band holds the greatest appeal. With an atmospheric, bluesy, semi-punky sound that's drawn no shortage of Velvet Underground comparisons, the band's been surprised to find what Moss describes as "a lot of old punk rockers" coming out to its shows.
"It was kind of weird when we started seeing older guys coming to see us," guitarist Luke Ford says. "I don't know if it's something really bad, the assumption we made, but we kind of assumed that it was the old lechy guys coming to see the girl in the band. But then you start talking to these guys, and they're coming to see you because they're feeling the spirit that they haven't felt in a long time."
"You actually want to go out and have a look at the audience, because we do get some real characters coming to see us," says drummer Ollie Betts. "And they've all got these stories of when they saw the Clash."
It's no sure thing whether the Duke Spirit will draw the same crowd on this side of the pond following the imminent U.S. release of its full-length debut Cuts Across the Land (the disc is already out in Canada). But if trendseekers who didn't catch the band on its quick stops in Toronto and Montreal this fall have any illusions as to what to expect on its first proper North American tour in the new year, Moss is only too eager to shatter them.
"I think often, the first time you go to a country, the superficiality takes hold," she says. "Like, 'Oh, they're young and good looking, and they've got a blond singer ... there's all this kind of crap. I just love that feeling when they come to see you live and you're really f---ing loud - when they see you as a whole, rather than something that can be molded by an angle."
