Hometown: London.
The lineup: Ben Edge (guitar, vocals), Danny Suplex (bass, backing vocals), Steve Coley (drums, backing vocals).
The background: It's such an old-fashioned word, isn't it, "spiv"? A bit like the word "rotter" – the one that the Sex Pistols used on that TV show in 1976 to show their absolute contempt for host Bill Grundy. It smacks of guttersnipes and the Dickensian era. Do they even have spivs any more? Is a spiv a chav in a suit? We're grateful to Thee Spivs for raising such key questions. The word "thee" is even more antiquated. We're not sure what Thee Spivs' thoughts are on Dickens or indeed of archaic, obsolete language in general but they certainly seem to be pretty big fans of punk – which is 35 next year, by the way.
Not that you'll need to dig out your old punk records to remind yourself of the glory days because here come Thee Spivs, three boys from Kent, Essex and Scunthorpe, to do it for you. How punk are they? They're so punk their singer's called Edge – you know, as in Vicious, Rotten and Hell. Even "Danny Suplex" smacks of a punk pseudonym, maybe because it sounds like Ruefrex. They're so punk they're playing the Hope and Anchor next Friday, and we could have sworn that legendary punk-era watering hole got closed down years ago. They're so punk that their debut album, Taped Up, recorded by Stuart James Cooper, has 14 tracks on it, with the longest pair both coming in at 2:34 and most of the rest hovering around the 90-second mark.
Taped Up, naturally, comes at you rude and crude, thick and fast. They wear their influences on their sleeve, do Thee Spivs, to the extent that, listened to end to end (and the whole thing only lasts 27 minutes), it comes across like a punk Stars in Their Eyes. The Fence Hop is the Ramones one, I Don't Want It is the Rezillos via the Clash and features a lyric about slamming your head against the wall (a popular pastime in the late 70s but not to be tried at home, alright, kids?). I'm Alive does the Jam's Eton Rifles, the vocals neatly expressing teen rage – if you can imagine such a quaint concept. It's True is the Undertones complete with a Sharkey-esque quiver in the voice. What's Wrong With You is a dead ringer for the Who's Can't Explain, and Leave Me Alone recalls early Wire at their most brutal, concise and sardonic – and even makes us think of Taped Up as a Wire-style coherent conceptual work rather than an excuse to rattle through a bunch of songs at breakneck speed.
Even the subject matter is 70s-era: Radio bangs on, albeit briefly, about how bad daytime radio is, as per the Clash's Capital Radio and Costello's Radio Radio. The funniest track, though not necessarily the best, is Uncle's Got An Asbo, about a miscreant of a relative who spends his time "bashing up the coppers". It sounds as though it was recorded in a toilet. Course it does.
The buzz: "One of the most talked about bands you've never heard of" – piccadillyrecords.com.
The truth: They're the spitting image of Eater, et al; they're keeping the punk "phlegm" burning; etc.
Most likely to: Sing about gob.
Least likely to: Sing about God.
What to buy: Taped Up is released by Damaged Goods on 15 November, preceded by the single I Don't Want It, out now.
File next to: Dr Feelgood, Eater, SLF, Sham 69.
Links: myspace.com/theespivs.
Wednesday's new band: Phaeleh.
• This article was amended on Wednesday 2 November 2010. The original said Taped Up was produced by Liam Watson from Toerag, and this has been corrected.
