“The music is, I suppose, a bit sexy and the mood in general is quite sexy but the element is water. It’s the seaside and the evening dew so it makes it, I don’t know, it’s all about good vibes. Even if we sound sad sometimes, or if my voice sounds a little bit sad, it’s still all about good vibes”.

When you ask a band to describe what their music sounds like you usually don’t get an answer quite like this. However Alex, the lead singer / songwriter from Spring, isn’t your average pop star. She was born in Madrid before moving to London and then settling in Paris. She is a huge fan of Denim, Felt and Shampoo as well as DJ Shadow and Dr Octagon. She has a voice to make you go weak at the knees and a grasp of the English language that makes even routine statements come out like philosophical comments.

“It’s hard not to know where you belong to. You always have to belong to somewhere because you are lost otherwise. It’s hard for us,” she says when asked to comment on the cosmopolitan nature of Spring’s music. “I believe that our souls now are somewhere in Spain because we go there a lot to do gigs and we have a lot of friends over there. When we do gigs over there we have all these little kids that are going to pay to see us. It’s crazy. So somehow we belong to there.

“However, the other way we cannot deny that we are from France and the suburbs. I don’t know, I was born in Madrid and then I went to live in Southgate and then we went to live in France. It’s hard because you go to school and you have to fight because it’s hard to talk in French. It’s something you have to do when you come to a new country and you’re six years old you can’t speak in French and people say “you dirty English go back to your country” and the thing is that you’re not even an English person.

“The rest of the band live in Paris but they come from different places in France so they are far from their family and they are very vulnerable and so that’s why you can have lots of fun with them. We always have good fun and I believe that people who are vulnerable try to catch all the good things they can from everyone and have good times together”.

Spring very much value their friends. Their album is called ‘Spring & Friends’ and features a series of collaborations with producers, DJs and, well, their friends. The first six tracks, which include the latest single ‘Chuck it Up’, were recorded with Javier Pez, a Spanish DJ and owner of the Novophonic label.

“I had some melodies and some lyrics I wanted to put to electronic music rather than acoustic music so we just connected with Javier because he was a friend of mine and it was great because he’s very into the groovy scene and the rap scene. He came to me and he said he had some samples but he didn’t have the songs for them and so I said to give us the tape and we’d put some songs to them”.

This makes for a very eclectic album. You can spot the love for English pop but it is combined with elements of French pop, Spanish rhythms and hip hop techniques.

It’s an album whose mood is so laid back it’s horizontal. It’s all about cafés and hanging out with your friends. It’s about being individual, yet open to ideas. “You have to learn about these things and you have to work with people. I would hate to work on my own if Spring didn’t exist because I would get so lonely. And because it’s great to share your ideas with someone and he would say well let’s add this to it and you would feel so pleased, you know, and you feel secure.

“The songs were meant to be like that and we would have done them like this anyway but it’s cool when you can do it with your friends because the friends you like you want to have a cup of coffee with, and go to a bar. It’s the same when you do music with your friends. It’s like having a cup of coffee but through music. It’s important”.

In ‘Spring & Friends’ you can hear evenings spent chatting in cafés, you can hear animated conversations and pointless debates. In ‘Spring & Friends’ you can hear a culture that’s slightly alien to this country. You can here atmosphere and love and friendship. As Alex sings on the single, “Everybody is getting sentimental” and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of sentimentality when it’s done this well.

Spring were talking to Ben, in March 1998.