“YOOOOOO, I’ll tell you…” the unmistakable Leeds’ tone of Mel B bleeds through Formal Sppeedwear’s Garage gig, mid-song. The snatch of the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ is so sudden it barely registers with the crowd who are battling the arid, dense air during one of the hottest Mays on record. “I was so sweaty,” admits drummer Connor Wells, a few days later.
In a set of lightning tight, propulsive art rock and new wave, the Stoke on Trent-hailing band are pulling from an archive: Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) Robert Fripp-ish guitar sounds, the medicalised, altered vocal delivery of Fear of Music-era David Byrne and nods to XTC to produce something which resonates with both familiarity and daringness. Gloriously out of step with current waves of indie and filled with a frenetic sense of unpredictability, it keeps you on your toes. Visually the band’s energy is distributed between halo-haired Charlie Ball, striking in a Rambo headband and a Choose Life shirt, who is having a ball squeezing out fox-like screams from his guitar, and left-hand bassist and vocalist Beck Clewlow has an imperious look on his face, dressed in Pulp-ish flares and tucked in a short-sleeved top. While Wells provides the Motorik cum disco bedrock of beats.
It turns out ‘Wannabe’ was part of the quasi-improvisational way the band operate when they are playing live. “Accidents can produce something fantastic and worthwhile,” says Clewlow over Zoom. “I’ve made mistakes live and been like, ‘Shit, that was better than the record’. And I’ve got no idea how to do it again,'” adds Ball. “I never, ever play the same song twice. I’m always improvising and changing little things.”
Friends from college, Ball and Wells reconnected post-university, sharing a love of Yellow Magic Orchestra and Neu!. After helping out mutual friend Clewlow with a solo gig, “He went, ‘Why don’t you just actually join the band?'” recalls Wells.
Happy accidents haunt Formal Sppeedwear. The band’s name with its double ‘P’ was a result of a typo that appeared on a self-made cassette sent out to record companies. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just take out the ‘P’ later,'” says Clewlow, “and I never did. And it was on posters and stuff.”
They decided to keep it. “Sometimes people end up getting the first part of the name correct but not the second,” says Wells. “We’ve been ‘Formal Sppeedwater before, which was pretty good.”
Early on in their career, searching for the band on Google would come with the suggestion: “Did you mean: Formal Speedwear?” “And we had a T-shirt printed with that design, but then shortly afterwards Google started getting it right,” says Clewlow, sadly.
After a self-released tape in 2021, they signed to the Melodic record label in 2023 and released a couple of acclaimed singles the following year – ‘Bunto’ and ‘A Dismount’. They were seen as part of a burgeoning DIY North-West scene which included Westside Cowboy and TTSSFU. The band correctly see themselves as following the beat of their own drum, “There are some fantastic bands in the scene with quite a variety of sounds. But we don’t really know anyone who is making the stuff we are,” says Wells. “I don’t think location, for me at least, has ever played any part in what we do,” says Ball who adds that musical “rabbit holes” on the internet is where he gets lots of inspiration.
One of the trademarks of Formal Sppeedwear’s sound is the impenetrable lyrics. ‘Fleas’, from their forthcoming debut album, for example (“I go to sit down/ The furniture floats/One light beams at the shot in the rough/ While the Spotlights peel/ On the face that’s made up”) paints an abstract, dream-like picture. “I suppose it’s culturally closer to Fluxus,” says Clewlow. For him penning the words is about going inward and finding something which resonates. “If you sit down in silence and think of what you’re going to say lyrically, that’s not a very successful way to doing it,” he explains. “The hardest part is plucking one idea or phrase and using it as a seed to reach the other areas of your brain.” Tapping into the subconscious creates a flow. “I have no prerogative or agenda when I’m writing,” he says. “But it’s kind of oxymoronic because what I wanted to say comes out anyway.” The meanings may be elusive but not to the writer. “I don’t know how believable this will come across but I won’t release a song where the lyrics don’t mean a great deal to me. It seems like they’re bollocks sometimes but I’m not stupid and they resonate with me.”
Chasing this liminal space is the ultimate creative payoff for him. “Nothing else comes close to the feeling when you’re actively making something. The sooner I can get back to that state, the better. Whatever you make, however it sounds, whilst you’re in that state it has inherent value.” Drummer Wells provides the counterpoint. “I’m the exact opposite,” he says. “I’m terrible with spontaneity!”
Ball says writing a song usually begins with Clewlow laying down a drum machine and bass part. Wells says his role is “arranger”. “I’ll come in and write a B section then we’ll work out a structure, so we can put those parts together.” Then they will all throw different ideas into the mix, including collaging scraps of other, unfinished songs, into one megasong. It can take months of tracking individual songs with little ideas which can or get dropped right up to the mixing stage.
This unique approach has led to their excellent debut Punch Card, out in September, being self-produced. “Nobody had a tweak or play. It was handled by three people and they’re all in the band,” says Ball. “This classic idea of a band goes into the recording studio with a producer and comes out with a finished product, that doesn’t work for us,” Clewlow adds. “I never decided that I wanted to be a songwriter,” says Clewlow. “Ultimately, I wanted to emulate things that made me feel good and use that as a vehicle of expression.” This doggedly unique approach is what makes Formal Sppeedwear stand out from the fray. Zig-a-zig-ah, indeed.
Formal Sppeedwear’s Punch Card is out September 11 via Melodic.
