STRANGER DAYS
The sun is setting in Los Angeles one evening in early May. The Struts have just finished making their new album – effectively from scratch, in just 10 days – and Luke Spiller is motorbiking out to Joshua Tree National Park.
“I remember riding and thinking: ‘Oh my god’,” the singer says. “I literally couldn’t fathom the amount of work and material that had been accumulated and recorded to such a high standard. It was kind of mind-blowing. But it all sunk in on that ride. This feeling of: ‘Ahhh, this is what it’s all about.’ I was riding on an empty highway, with just some music on my airpods. It was a real moment of: ‘Wow, I can’t wait for people to hear this.’ I’ll always remember that.”
This is a very Luke Spiller anecdote. The motorbike, the music, the evocative snapshot of nostalgic Hollywood roguishness… Musically he flits between eras, but visually the 32-year-old embodies the sort of offbeat, old-world decadence seen in very few of his contemporaries. He’s sort of like a male Norma Desmond for the iPhone generation, with one eye on Queen’s deep cuts and the other
