Spearmint – 'Chase Me'

London's Spearmint return with their ambitious new concept album Chase Me, out 24th July 2026 via WIAIWYA Records. Built around three chases across a city at night, the band's eleventh studio album explores success, disillusionment, peril and resurrection, while lead single "1986" looks back to a pre-internet era where music forged connections across borders.

Ahead of the album's release, songwriter Shirley Lee discusses the origins of the record, working once again with producer Rhodri Marsden, the band's remarkable longevity, and why Chase Me might just make a great movie.

1. Chase Me is described as a thriller, a horror and an allegory, built around three chases across a city at night. How did the concept first take shape, and was it always intended to work as a narrative album rather than a collection of individual songs?

It started as a conversation I had with my wife while we were out walking in South London – it was an idea for an app that would enable you to opt into being chased across the city by a masked pursuer. If you evaded being caught then you'd win, but if you were caught, you'd lose. We then thought that this would make a fun movie, where a bored, successful guy uses the app to add some excitement back into his life, but it then gets out of hand.

I wrote an outline for a movie and liked it but concluded that it would never get made as a film as we don't know how to do that, and the prospect of seeking funding and the time commitment involved seemed off-putting. But we do know how to make an album, so I wondered it could be a record instead. This seemed like a really stupid idea, so I was immediately drawn to it!

It took a while to work out that it's an album in its own right, not a soundtrack, or a collection of songs inspired by the movie (that doesn't exist). The songs are personal and also act as 'stopping-off points', that loosely follow the narrative.

2. The lead single "1986" looks back to a pre-internet era when music created connections across borders. What inspired that theme, and do you think we've lost something in the way we experience music today?

Everything in the song is true: I did travel from Newcastle to Madrid to stay with a friend. I was very young and naïve and was over-whelmed by the different culture, temperature, lifestyle and the language barrier. Then we went out after midnight to a club he'd found and when I was on the dancefloor, the differences all dropped away – we were dancing to the same music as we'd been dancing to in Newcastle. Specifically, it was The Queen Is Dead-era Smiths that kept being played. My inhibitions dropped away and I felt fully connected to these strangers by the music.

3. You've reunited with producer Rhodri Marsden for this record. What did he bring to the sessions, and how did his involvement help shape the sound and atmosphere of Chase Me?

Rhodri's been helping us in one way or another since the very beginning and he's produced or co-produced five of our albums so far. I got a bit lost while I was writing this album as using the narrative as a guide felt strange at first. By the time I took the songs to Rhodri, I wasn't sure whether they were any good or not. I've been really pleased with our last few albums, so I said to Rhodri that I just wanted us to make something that was as good as they are. He absorbed the songs and then said "I think this is better again – shall we get started?" And as usual with Rhodri, we got cracking the next day.

He's great to work with – he gets what we're trying to do. I try to give him as much free rein as possible, but there are some songs that I just really want to be tackled in a certain way. He is respectful of this, but also great at suggesting new directions for other songs. It's really creative and we all enjoy it. Rhodri's involvement is definitely central to the sound and atmosphere of the album, and I'm delighted with it.

4. Spearmint are now 27 years into their career and releasing an 11th studio album with the original line-up intact. What's the secret to maintaining both the band's chemistry and your creative ambition after all this time?

Well, I seem to be addicted to writing albums – I find it fascinating and will probably carry on doing this as long as I'm able to. I never assume that the band will all be up for working on each one, but so far, they've all kept opting in, which I guess means they enjoy it. There's probably also something about wanting to go the distance and see what happens next. Goodness knows they're not getting any money out of it!

And actually, a complete lack of commercial success is the secret to staying together and maintaining creative ambition – we're purely focused on making records that we think are good. There are no distractions around trying to please anyone else.

Another thing I've noticed about the four of us is that we are incredibly good in a crisis. When everyone is losing their heads, we become very calm and are able to find a way through. Levels of humour rise too. There is something about the mix of our personalities that makes this happen – there is a mix of different attitudes and knowledge between the four of us that works somehow. I think this is part of why we've been durable over the years.

5. Shirley has said the story behind Chase Me "would make a good movie". If you could cast the film adaptation tomorrow, who would play the lead character, and what would audiences take away from the story?

I know the answer to this – it's Glenn Howerton from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. I very clearly pictured him as the disaffected over-successful rich tech entrepreneur who has become isolated from everyone else after Covid, and needs something exciting and dangerous to reconnect him to life.

Audiences would hopefully be excited by the three long chases across the city at night, and thrilled by the rooftop denouement that sees the central character and his masked pursuer plunge to near-death before both waking up heavily bandaged in hospital. They would then be slightly confused by the ending – Was it real? Was it just an allegory for death? Who was the pursuer? Yeah, some people would like it and some wouldn't!