Album Notes

Spottiswoode grew up in London. He was a good boy.

He started playing guitar at the age of twelve. It took him about ten years to write a halfway decent tune. Since then he has written hundreds and hundreds.

At the end of the last millennium, he moved to New York City. The New Yorker calls him a “genius” and a “downtown ringleader.”

Spotty’s songs have been covered and recorded by numerous East Village and Williamsburg musicians, and featured in a variety of mainstream and independent films. Somehow he has been able to hold together a gang of seven of New York’s finest musicians, put out a string of acclaimed records, perform residencies at New York’s best clubs, play Lincoln Center, tour the country, cross the ocean… even though his band despises him.

It isn’t easy to describe the music they play. It depends on the night or the record. Spottiswoode composes songs of all genres, and his band of multi-instrumentalists is ready and willing to switch instruments and gears in the blink of an eye. A single show may include a delicate folk ballad, a balls-out rocker, a hilarious cabaret ditty, and a neo-gospel lament. But Spottiswoode cringes at the word “eclectic.” “We are expressionists!” he pleads.

Dan Reed of WXPN Radio put it this way: “Spottiswoode and his Enemies do something that few bands can do: evoke real emotions, sometimes several different ones in a single song. Spottiswoode himself is both funny and scary at the same time, and there is undeniably a major talent lurking behind the songs and the live show. Lotsa unexpected twists and turns, and lotsa soul.”