For his feelgood third solo album We Wanna BeHyp-No-Tized, Pavement co-founder Scott Kannberg best known to the musical world as Spiral Stairs concocted some of the most fun and accessible music of his storied career by expanding his musical repertoire. We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized is fun, infectious and musically compelling, while still managing to cover some hefty topics like the current rambunctious political climate. Reuniting the bulk of the dream team who assisted him on Doris & The Daggers album, bassist Matthew Harris (Oranger, The Posies), multi instrumentalist Tim Regan and good friend Kelley Stoltz, as well as former touring Preston School Of Industry drummer Jim Lindsay, We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized is the most fully rendered encapsulation to date of Spiral Stairs nimitable aesthetic.

“To me We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized feels like the records I’ve been listening to and the records I’ve been digging and aspire to sound like,” Spiral offers. “In my early-twenties I felt like I knew everything – I always knew about new bands before everyone else – but that kind of closed off a lot of bands that I didn’t give much credence to, and now I’m a bit older and it’s, like, ‘Wow, how did I miss that?’

“I’m talking things like the first two Nick Lowe records – I’m obsessed by that shit, they’re beautiful, beautiful songs on those records. Then he led me to this guy Jim Ford who’s like a weird country-soul singer, he’s so good. And I’ve really got into Van Morrison way deeper than I’ve ever got into Van Morrison before.

“So I got into that 1973 album Veedon Fleece, and then of course Roxy Music stuff and Brian Ferry. But I think the influences on this are definitely Nick Lowe and Van Morrison – I even tried to sing like Van Morrison on a lot of the songs, like how he repeats himself a lot. Those are the kind of bands I would never have liked in 1984… or 1994… or 2004 really.”