Public Service Broadcasting - Spitfire
Two guys with charmingly English and idiosyncratic names (J Willgoose, Esq and Wrigglesworth), who sample archive footage and chuck electronica, banjos and krautrock over the top maybe doesn’t sound like a recipe for greatness. When you consider this top 30 is based on my listening for the last 10 years, and that one PSB album and a handful of EPs got enough play from me last year to almost put them in my top 10, you might get an idea of how, in fact, it is so much more than great.
For their EP “The War Room”, the BFI granted them access to WWII propaganda films and archive material. What PSB came up with was not jingoistic, not weakly nostalgic, but powerful and evocative. Spitfire, which appears on the EP, and also on their début album Inform - Educate - Entertain, is a perfect example of the PSB method - combining clips from The first of the Few with a simple riff to stirring effect.