Freak Like You

Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has got the needle down on a tune that feels like it was written for the long-haired, leather-booted side of the room. “Freak Like You” is The Struts, off the 2018 album Young & Dangerous, and it is the kind of glam-rock shout that still smells like hairspray, cigarette ash, and a barroom that refuses to close. Luke Spiller, the singer with the big voice and the even bigger strut, has called the track gospel meeting musical theatre. There is a massive hook that piles on near the end, a saxophone that nobody in the band ordered, and a lyric sheet that treats every oddball on the sidewalk like family. If you have ever felt a little sideways in a straight world, this one is waving you over.

Spiller told Louder the song came together in a hurry while he was riding through Los Angeles on the way to the studio. He was looking out the window and trying to put a whole life into a single line. They passed a scrapyard. A man pushing a trolley had welded bits of junk onto it until the thing looked like a homemade aeroplane. Spiller thought it looked like a spaceship, wrote it down, and by the time the van hit the studio he had the opening picture: Bobby builds a spaceship in his backyard. He stepped out for a cigarette and came back with another verse. The groove was already rolling. He has said the session was on fire, the kind of stretch where the songs show up before you have time to second-guess them.

The sax is its own little legend. Spiller wanted something flashy and eighties, the sort of solo you might hear on an old Spandau Ballet record. What came back was a crooked jazz line that made him ask what in the world was going on. He could not tell if he was hearing synth or rock. At first he hated it. Then he could not get it out of his head, and he ended up loving it. He has called it the weirdest saxophone solo he has ever heard, and he means that as a compliment. In a Glide Magazine sit-down he put the whole song in one frame: gospel meets musical theatre, a big soulful hook, and quirky lines that describe people from every walk of life who still end up in the same room. We are all freaks at the end of the day, he said, and that sense of unity is the gospel part.

Another Man caught him talking about the same record and the same outsiders. The line he landed on was simple enough to paint on a leather jacket: call me what you like, I will still be who I am. He framed “Freak Like You” as an anthemic shout-out to the folks who do not fit the poster. On the album itself he parked the song on the deeper side, not as an opener and not as a closer. He told an interviewer in Paris that the first half of Young & Dangerous is colorful and youthful, and the second half digs in, with “Freak Like You,” “Ashes,” and “Tatler Magazine” carrying more musical weight. The album title itself was a phrase that kept turning up. It sits inside “Fire” and it sits inside this song. Spiller did not plan both tracks for the same record. Once they both made the cut, the name felt inevitable. He has also joked that he is not exactly young anymore, so he figured he would call the album Young & Dangerous and stay young on paper. The band has said the second record was meant as a part two of Everybody Wants, same spirit, a little more push, written while they were touring themselves ragged.

The four of them did not come out of a London scene with a manager and a plan. Luke Spiller grew up around Bristol and Clevedon, raised on gospel before he found Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, Queen, AC/DC, and Leonard Cohen. He was playing in bands as a kid and only started singing at sixteen. In 2009 he crossed paths with Derby guitarist Adam Slack. Both of their teenage groups were falling apart. They clicked, Spiller moved to Derby, and the two of them wrote and recorded together for nearly three years. Early bass and drums came and went. By 2012 Jed Elliott and Gethin Davies had locked in, and the lineup that still rides together was set. The name was an accident. Spiller was moving around a rehearsal room and somebody said he strutted a lot. They could not believe the name was free, so they took it.

The early gigs were pure road-dog stuff. Slack has laughed about a Leicester show that drew one man and a dog. The band was so tickled they billed themselves The Sprouts for the night and swapped instruments. A few years later they were sitting in a pub in Scunthorpe, wondering what the next month looked like and booked for a room of about thirty-five people, when the phone rang. A band had dropped off a Rolling Stones date in Paris. Somebody had seen their clips. They went from that pub to a stage in front of tens of thousands, and France has been part of the story ever since. Spiller has said that gig threw them in the deep end and changed everything. From Derby, of all places, they got picked up hard in the States, opened for the Stones, the Foo Fighters, and Guns N’ Roses, and kept the English flair: Queen-sized audience talk, a little Slade in the shout-along, glam boots, and no interest in sanding the edges off.

That is the spirit the Zoo Crew hears in “Freak Like You.” It is a roll call for the backyard inventors, the night owls, the folks who show up in the wrong jacket and still own the room. Young & Dangerous came out in October 2018 on Interscope, the second full album after Everybody Wants, and this track is the one that still sounds like a hand on your shoulder. The Zoo keeps spinning the deep cuts and the big ones for the Freaks who still want a station that talks like a friend. Pull up a stool over at THE ZOO and stay a while.

If you want the band in their own words and pictures, the front door is the official site at thestruts.com. Their Facebook page lives at facebook.com/thestruts, the Instagram feed is @thestruts, and the X account is @TheStruts. The long-running fan circle that calls itself the Strutters keeps a public group at Strutters on Facebook, run by fans for fans, and a matching fan account on X at @StruttersOFCL. Go say hello, then come back and turn it up. The freaks are already here.