Written by: Nik Venet
Host Matt Pinfield welcomes Spiritual Cramp to The SoCal Sound’s Pinfield Sessions, reconnecting with the band that he made a permanent affectation of the SoCal Sound after being “blown away” at a live show in Los Angeles.
Vocalist and bandleader Michael Bingham and drummer Julian Smith join Pinfield in The SoCal Sound studio, giving a history lesson on the band’s evolution and laying down a smoking hot live set with a few tracks from “Rude.”
The session exemplifies how their live performances turn first-time listeners into dedicated fans, a dynamic that Pinfield notes from seeing the band: “It was one of my favorite performances of last year.” There is no mystery why these guys sell out venues like L.A.’s Lodge Room.
The Set List
Spiritual Cramp performs new songs from “Rude,” including “Automatic,” “At My Funeral” and “Young Offenders,” which Pinfield notes are already resonating strongly on the air. The band explains how these songs are the product of nearly two years on tour, followed by only about a month of preparation before heading straight into two weeks in the studio to record the album.
The performance captures the band’s blend of punk, dub and post-punk influences, which they blame on repeated exposure to The Clash, The Specials and Gang of Four, while firmly grounding the sound in their own West Coast perspective. Even in the controlled environment of the studio, the set feels like a Polaroid of the tightly wound, high-energy show they bring to the stage.
“I want to walk out on stage and destroy the room,” warns Bingham.
Starting the Band
Michael and his bassist Mike blame their success on the years they spent playing in punk and hardcore bands, saying, “We learned how to tour and how to DIY punk.”
Michael says it just hit him one day with clairvoyance; he turned to his bass player and said, “We should be in a post-punk band.” And so was born Spiritual Cramp in the year 2017.
Soon after releasing their first Spiritual Cramp seven-inch, the band started getting the attention they had only dreamed of. “We started getting offers to go on tours that were bigger than any of the other bands we had been in at the time,” Michael recalls.
He goes on to describe seven-inches as the currency of punk rock, explaining how that first record grew into a series of singles and then, in 2023, their first full-length LP, which marked the point when Spiritual Cramp became a full-time touring band.
The Evolution of the Line UP and the Chemistry of Collaboration
Michael says the current lineup came together through what he can only describe as a “domino effect.” At that point when they became a full-time touring band, a bunch of them “were like, whoa, I don’t know if I want to be in a full-time band as a job.” And that “there was just this like domino effect of people needing to step away from the band and then new guys kind of like fresh legs, yeah.”
That’s when drummer Julian Smith joined after a last-minute introduction and the band immediately headlined at SXSW.
Julian describes joining Spiritual Cramp as stepping into “a well-oiled machine right off the rip,” thinking, This is amazing.” Before long, they were on tour with Angel Dust and Viagra Boys. Julian laughs about how he first discovered Viagra Boys in 2020, played the band for his wife, saying their singer was insane: “Yeah and then, you know, I blinked and I’m standing in a green room with Seb, their singer,” realizing how far things had come.
Bingham explains that the band’s musical DNA formed through early and repeated exposure to punk rock: “It was AFI and the Misfits and then immediately it was the Ramones and it was The Clash, and then you learn about The Specials and you learn who The Specials were taking their influences from, right, so immediately all of the influences just kind of grew outwards into 20 different directions.”
He describes discovering “fabric-level” bands that shaped his tastes—“then, you know, you get into Joy Division as you get a little older, right?” And then moving toward a more sophisticated taste: “You turn 23 and your prefrontal cortex develops and you’re like, I want to be into this thing that’s a little higher brow, right, like Wire, you know, this more intellectual music, whereas you find out about these fabric-level bands that can kind of create what you’re interested in. Then you can grow and say, you know, you listen to Gang of Four and you’re like, oh, this is that thing, but it’s intellectualized.”
NBD Just Touring With Our Heroes
One of the core themes of the conversation is how quickly Spiritual Cramp found themselves on the road with artists they grew up admiring.
“It feels so awesome to do this thing where I was like, okay, I’m gonna take a leap here and try to be the leader of a band and create this weird kind of reggae dub-inspired project that at the time some people were like, this is crazy. People would tell us it was crazy.”
Smith recalls early tours with Angel Dust and Viagra Boys and both he and Bingham describe a life-changing experience opening for Iggy Pop in San Francisco,
“It’s very humbling to get to, you know, meet Iggy Pop and have him, you know, be like, I love your band, I think you’re so amazing. You’re like, you’re never in a million years did I ever think that someone like that would ever even hear anything that I have done. He put us on the radio while he had Tom Waits in the studio and we were all just on our phones, screen recording the audio of the two of them talking back and forth about our band. It was just like the most surreal moment.”
Later, Spiritual Cramp toured Europe with Rise Against while sharing a bus with LS Dunes, whose members include alumni of Thursday and Coheed and Cambria. Michael also talks excitedly about an upcoming European and UK tour with The Hives,
“When we started this band, we said we should do something that kind of sounds like The English Beat and The Hives… And then we you know we got an offer to do a one-off show with the Hives and their guitar player Nicholas walked up and he said I love that song that you sound checked.”
The New Album And What’s Next
“Rude” is a textbook example of the long-term consequences of paying your dues in punk rock bands, hauling your own gear to venues without names in towns you’ve never heard of until the songs are so sharp they’ll cut through the PA system on a public bus.
The record came together fast in the studio because much of the work had already been done on the road, letting the band zero in on feel and performance instead of scrambling to write with the expensive studio meter spinning.
The band’s short-term plans include a European and UK run with The Hives, a full U.S. headlining tour in February and March and summer festival dates in Europe, all turning those hard-won songs into the kind of live sets they’ve built their name on.
“Rude” is streaming everywhere and available on vinyl LP from Blue Grape Music. (https://bluegrapemusic.com)
Nik Venet endured a long career in music video only for MTV to call it quits. These days he blogs music for The SoCal Sound and side-eyes political institutions for L.A. Taco; under the supervision of two rowdy black cats who are notably unimpressed by his credits.
This blog post was contributed in a collaboration with the CSUN Journalism Department.
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- · Filmed & Edited & Photographed by Matt Blake
- · Audio by Tristan Dolce
- · Host: Matt Pinfield
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