BIG STIR RECORDS and Canterbury, England's SPYGENIUS are delighted to end the year and usher in the holidays with an epic act of heartfelt musical re-gifting. SPYGENIUS BLOW THEIR COVERS, and all-new album of reimagined versions of some of the band's favorite vintage (and modern) tunes, is out on CD and all digital platforms November 26 (Black Friday) and up for pre-order at www.bigstirrecords.com and everwhere now. It's heralded by the single “Queen Of Eyes”, a gorgeous version of the SOFT BOYS classic that nonetheless only hints at what's under the wrapping paper of SPYGENIUS BLOW THEIR COVERS.

It would be an understatement to say that SPYGENIUS as a band are riding high despite the times, with their ambitious 2020 double album MAN ON THE SEA having been declared Album of the Year at HERE COMES THE FLOOD among many other accolades. The new record is something completely different, albeit sparkling with the same heady psych-pop guitars, intricate keys and distinct harmonies that've defined the band since their inception. Here they've taken a break from crafting their own original tunes to pay tribute to their influences and even their contemporaries, and tackled an eclectic and revelatory set of covers. The chosen tunes span the full continuum of the pop-rock era, giving us a peek into their own musical influences but most importantly serving up a set that's just as sly, textured, and fun as anything the Canterbury foursome has ever recorded.

Kicking off with a medley of songs by Traffic and The Monkees, SPYGENIUS BLOW THEIR COVERS packs 14 tunes into 13 tracks. There are of course nods to the band's primary roots in the British and US '60s scene, with ace takes on Gene Clark's “So You Say You Lost Your Baby”, Buffalo Springfield's “Rock 'N' Roll Woman,” the Paul McCartney-penned “Step Inside Love” (a UK hit for Cilla Black) and yet another Monkees tune (“For Pete's Sake”). There are – perhaps unsurprisingly given the band's reputation for cheeky wit – obscure curveballs like “Griselda,” originally recorded by Michael Hurley and The Unholy Modal Rounders, and the sea shanty “Murrumbidgee Whalers”, a tune from which frontman Peter Watts' pre-Spygenius '80s band took their name and which figured subliminally in the interstitial soundscapes dotting Man On The Sea.
Tributes to the continuing heritage of literate pop-rock in the post-punk era appear as well, in the form of a cover of Squeeze's “Is That Love” and the riotously unhinged version of Madness's “Michael Caine” that closes the album. Closest to the band's heart is the Soft Boys cover, which Spygenius wear like a second skin. “You could certainly make the case that The Soft Boys, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians were undeniable ‘touch point’ groups for Spygenius,” explains Watts, “but this song is here because of the burgeoning friendship between Spygenius and (Soft Boys bassist) Matthew Seligman that was so cruelly cut short by his passing early in the COVID-19 pandemic. We miss him very deeply. Whenever he would come to visit we would laugh so much…”

Also emblematic of the community-minded ethos of the group, and their view that rock and roll is anything but a retro pursuit, are their versions of tunes by two of their contemporary bands. It's certainly to be hoped that the exuberant romp through “Please Stop Talking” by fellow Brits Kelly's Heels will inspire listeners to seek out the original, which shines here as a terrific jangling rocker. And their complete reimagining of a song by BSR labelmates Plasticsoul -- “Therapy,” the title track to the California band's last album – transforms the freakbeat-tinged rocker into a shimmering, dreamy waltz that moved the tune's writer, Steven Wilson, to tears upon first listen.

“Along with the rest of the world, normal operations for Project Spygenius ground to an undignified halt in 2020,” explains Watts of the record's pandemic-era gestation, “so, to keep ourselves ticking over, we decided to do something we don’t normally do – try our hands at a bunch of covers… and not just any covers… covers that said something about Spygenius.” SPYGENIUS BLOW THEIR COVERS emerges as a great deal more than a bit of fun – although that it most certainly is – and far from an exercise in nostalgia. Watts, along with bassist Ruth Rogers, keyboard wizard Matt Byrne and drummer Alan Cannings (all of whom combine for the band's signature jaw-dropping harmonies) have fashioned a love letter to both the music that inspires them and the impetus to keep creating, challenging themselves, and giving back to those who have supported them along the way. It is as wonderful and sincere a gift as Big Stir Records could hope to give at the end of yet another challenging year, and a promise of more to come from SPYGENIUS.

Canterbury, England's SPYGENIUS returns with a new double album, MAN ON THE SEA, to be released July 10 on Big Stir Records as a two-vinyl-LP gatefold set, double-length CD, and digital download. It's available for pre-order at www.bigstirrecords.com/store and at most online retailers now. Featuring 17 brand new tracks and lavish design work from the group's visual arts collaborator Joseph Champniss, the album showcases one of Britain's finest purveyors of literate psychedelic pop at the height of their melodic and genre-defying powers.

The ambitious new recording is at once sprawling and focused, dazzling and intimate, and continues exploring the themes of their previous album 'Pacéphale. The four sides are balanced between the intricate, sparkling, harmony-adorned jangle-pop for which the band is renowned and more contemplative explorations of loss and middle-aged regret, often expressed in the nautical imagery suggested by the collection's title. Befitting a band whose roots tap deeply into both the folk-psych sixties and the heyday of '80s college rock, Man On The Sea can be heard as Quadrophenia-by-way-of-Automatic For The People, with its stylistic diversions adding up to a questioning but ultimately exhilarating whole.

Man On The Sea is the fifth album from Spygenius, whose lineup – singer/guitarist/chief songwriter PETER WATTS, bassist/vocalist RUTH ROGERS, keyboardist/vocalist MATT BYRNE and drummer/vocalist ALAN CANNINGS – has developed an unmistakable vocal and instrumental chemistry since their 2008 debut and through near-constant gigging and touring in the UK and abroad. Their watershed 2017 album 'Pacéphale (released internationally by Big Stir Records) inaugurated the band's close partnership with visual artist and animator Champniss, whose strikingly whimsical videos and illustrations, combined with the record's sophisticated and beguiling songcraft, gained the band a wider global audience and set the stage for the new record's kaleidoscopic sweep.

Preceded by a trio of wry but musically exuberant singles – “Another True Story”, “If You Go A-Roving”, and the Rogers-penned-and-sung “Spite”, all bracingly immediate jangle-rock gems that received strong international airplay and reviews – Man On The Sea contains much that will scratch the same itch for expectant listeners. The lilting “Café Emery Hill”, the spritely-but-cautious “Salaud Days”, and the Beatles-esque “Watch Your Back” are all cut from the same cloth of catchy and very British pop perfection. They are, however, part of a deeper dive into troubled waters: the urgent drive of postpunk raveups like the R.E.M.-tinged “New Street”, the driving “In A Garden” and the genuinely harrowing “Don't Blame It On Your Mother” practically writhe with nervous energy.

The album's more reflective tunes likewise veer between the disquieting (the darkly humorous “Man Overboard” and the howling “Green Eyed Monster”) and the tentatively redemptive. The conciliatory likes of “Midnight Bandola” and the closing “Remember Me When I Was Good”, a pair of melancholy shuffles, offer the solace of a good drink with an old friend and a cautious celebration of “all the stuff that makes life worth the bother” respectively. Elsewhere jazz, dark folk, and delicately building psychedelia inform “Albion”, “Dolphinarium 1986” and “Windy” in turn, with all of them hinting at the yearning that's perhaps most palpable on the lush “Tomorrowland”: nostalgia for a future that never quite came to be.

That the seafaring voyage of Man On The Sea spans not only oceans, but decades as well, is no accident. “The Spygenius project has always been about not only writing new material, but also about realising quite a substantial back catalogue of tunes amassed over the years,” explains Watts. “I’ve actually found this quite fruitful artistically, because it creates a sort of de facto conversation between my older and younger selves, which is existentially revealing.”

It's thus that tunes dating back to Peter's early days in the appropriately-named Murrumbidgee Whalers (and songs ruminating on earlier times still) rub shoulders with the kind of arch commentary that could only reflect the grim realities of post-Brexit England, or the complicated grief of the passing of his mother on the closing “Remember Me”. “For me it’s almost era defining,” Watts offers. “Some of the songs were from before, everything else now on is from after, which is as yet largely uncharted waters… back to the ocean references.”

In its themes and by synthesizing the band's influences into a coherent amalgam of the exuberant, the urgent, and the bittersweet, Man On The Sea is at once a summation and a clearing of the deck for Spygenius. And as always, there's ample musical playfulness leavening the depths and darkness of the crossing. One can only marvel at the sturdiness and grace of the Good Ship Spygenius as she navigates these most treacherous of waters... long may she sail.

The Lucky 13th BIG STIR DIGITAL SINGLE belongs to Big Stir Britannia's leading lights and one of our favo(u)rite bands anywhere, the one and only SPYGENIUS of Canterbury, England! Sporting brand new and characteristically brilliant cover art from their enigmatic visual collaborator CHAMPNISS OF LONDON, "If You Go A-Roving" b/w "Let Me In" will see release Friday, 19 January and is available now for preorder!

Shortly after unleashing their acclaimed fourth album ‘Pacéphale to an unsuspecting world, SPYGENIUS (Peter, Ruth, Alan and Matt, as ever) retired to their musical shed somewhere in the south east of England to begin work on the follow up, given the intriguing provisional title of ‘Spygenius Album #5’. These two tracks come from those still ongoing sessions. The A side – "If You Go A-Roving" – explores what happens if you stick a melody loosely influenced by English folk music on top of a jangle pop backing (and features on the latest International Pop Overthrow compilation). The B side – "Let Me In" – is a monster themed bit of funky old nonsense that the Spygeniants knocked together for Christina and Rex’s Hallowen Specials on their recently concluded radio programme, but hasn’t seen a formal release before. It was supposed to sound like the Hoodoo Gurus, but it doesn’t, really.

Definitely at the ‘and more’ end of the ‘power pop and more’ spectrum, Spygenius formed in the mid-2000s with the aim of writing, recording and performing original songs for as long as they could get away with it. Classic melodic pop is their baseline, but they are known for their cheeky eclecticism and will often embellish or deviate from their basic live line-up of guitar, bass, drums, keys and four vocals in their recordings. So, catchy tunes, lyrics to listen to, lush harmonies - think Beatles 66-68, think Byrds, think Buffalo Springfield and Bonzo Dog Band – but just as much think Squeeze, Elvis Costello, Robyn Hitchcock, Rain Parade, early R.E.M., and XTC (shhh, don’t tell Ruth!). Then stop thinking that and listen to the tracks instead.

As well as regular gigging around the UK, they are veterans of the International Pop Overthrow festivals - in Liverpool, London and occasionally Los Angeles – and for the last couple of years have taken a central role in organising the BIG STIR BRITANNIA events in Croydon the U.K. Spygenius Album #5 is slated for release later in 2019, on Big Stir Records – and in the meantime all four previous releases can be found on the Big Stir Records website alongside the new single.

The time has come for Big Stir Records to begin paving the way for the forthcoming album from Canterbury, England's SPYGENIUS, and we can only do so with “Spite” – that's the A-side of the first single from the band's forthcoming double LP MAN ON THE SEA, out along with a new and exclusive non-album B-Side in the form of “Heaven Is Blue” on Friday, April 24 and available for pre-order at www.bigstirrecords.com/big-stir-digital-singles now. Like the new LP, the single features cover art from the band's brilliant in-house designer, the inimitable CHAMPNISS of London.

Man On The Sea, due later in 2020 as a double vinyl LP and double-length CD, is the ambitious, sweeping fifth album from SPYGENIUS that sees the celebrated jangle-popsters in terrifically witty, genre-hopping form. “Spite”, penned and sung by bassist RUTH ROGERS, is but one one of the eclectic record's sparkling, buoyant-but-wry gems, cut from the same musical cloth as the band's prior single and MOTS track “If You Go A-Roving”.

That the exclusive B-Side, the majestic White-Album-era-Beatles-evoking “Heaven Is Blue”, is not included on Man On The Sea is a testament to the wellspring of inspiration and craft that lead singer and songwriter PETER WATTS has on hand at this time. While his material on the album runs the gamut from ebullient pop to intense postpunk and dark folk, Watts calls “Heaven” “a dive into the murky waters of pastiche” in reference to its debts to the Fabs. “It's loosely inspired by His Blueness, the leader of the Blue Meanies, and sort of a reflection on/reaction to Sexy Sadie/Maharishi… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, saviours and superheroes simply don’t exist, y’all! Here in Spygeniusland, hard-won existential clarity, courage and compassion trump (not Trump!) political naivety (however enticing) every time.” We'd add a soaring sense of melody, a period-perfect arrangement, and a wickedly loping groove to the arsenal of musical armament brought to bear here, but the track is by any measure a non-album jewel to treasure and absolutely essential. Release details for MAN ON THE SEA can be expected in the coming months from Big Stir Records!

The fourth album from Canterbury, England's Spygenius, reissued for the US (with exclusive bonus enclosures) by Big Stir Records!

Opus three from Spygenius HQ, and it’s “loads of fun for everyone” (Powerpopaholic). This disc offers a shedload of fan faves including ‘California Sunshine’ (which is about growing up in South London, bizarrely…), Autoclave (check out the cool animated video!) and the Spygenius version of the Murrumbidgee Whalers’ classic ‘Giving Way to Trains’.

The sophomore platter from Spygenius, which the guys at Not Lame described as “hypnotic, intoxicating and wonderfully disconnected … Very Highly Recommended”. They also said that “Spygenius come from a committed creative space few artists have the disposition, balls and gumption to explore”, which was nice of them! The album features frequent live set opener ‘Digdens Rise’, Spygenius signature pop tune, ‘The Girl Who’s Everywhere’, and the slightly bewildering ‘First Do No Harm’.