“I was trying to be this ‘bad boy’, and it prohibited my growth”: How Spiritual Cramp confront their insecurities on new album RUDE

“Everyone calls me ‘the mayor’,” reveals Michael Bingham – the closest we get to a humble brag from Spiritual Cramp’s warm, candid frontman. “I think I’m pretty good at eliciting positive responses in people.”

In terms of leadership qualities, Michael has everything you’d want in a mayor, steering the Spiritual Cramp ship forward with self-assurance, poise and playfulness. But the measured version of Michael that Kerrang! meets today, trailed by his dog Bagheera, has not always been this way. Truth be told, he used to be an absolute dick…

“Part of who I am now is, ‘Okay, I gotta wake up, meditate, and practise non-judgement today,’” he reflects. “But the flip side is where I came from, and that is this sneering, little fuck. We were little hooligans, running around, [causing] trouble, and we didn’t care about the consequences. ‘Fuck the world’ – because it fucked me. I am still fighting against that now.”

At the heart of that duality is the title of Spiritual Cramp’s second album, RUDE. Their 2023 debut announced the San Franciscan troublemakers with a collection of songs about “being bad, doing drugs and partying”, told through concise indie-rock firecrackers that incorporated punk, dub and ska influences. Two years later, RUDE contends with that character, tackling how – and why – it still feeds into Michael’s present-day persona.

“That guy still has a seat at the table,” reckons Michael. “That mindset was armour that I was able to put on, as a young kid who didn’t have a family. If I become bad, no-one can touch me, and that was really helpful [until] a certain point. The band started growing, I was trying to be this ‘bad boy’, and it prohibited my growth. There’s a dichotomy happening, and RUDE is at the centre of it all.”

That armour meant the brash Michael Bingham of old was quick to judge, form an opinion and concern himself with how others perceived him. This summer, he nearly cancelled plans to see Oasis, for fear of being recognised by some of the “lame” 90,000 attendees, who would mock him for being a “try-hard”. It’s all in his head, he’s come to realise with time, and the guiding light of both sobriety and therapy.

“I realised that maybe the world doesn’t compartmentalise and judge me like I judge it,” explains Michael. “It’s really easy to compare what you’re doing to other people, and my brain likes to say, ‘I understand this, and it’s lame.’ I make so many assumptions about things, and none of that’s real. The only thing that’s real is, ‘I don’t know what’s going on outside of right here,’” he says, pointing at his brain. “The only way I’m going to be happy is if I understand that I don’t understand any of this.”

By design, the genre-fluid vessel of Spiritual Cramp was created in its own sonic lane. On RUDE, Michael is figuring out how to stay on the path. He immortalises his growth in New Religion, where he accepts ‘I never said I had it figured out / I never said that it was cool’, before professing he’s ‘found a new religion that no-one else can see’.

“I can work really hard to learn how to understand things, and do my research,” he continues. “But at the end of the day, I’m just some guy, trying to put the pieces together and enjoy my day-to-day life. Which, at the heart of it, is all you can ever do as a human being.” Speaking to K! on the eve of the record release, Michael is putting this mentality into practice, visibly grateful for all the excitement happening around his band.

At face value, RUDE is an album set in San Francisco. Opener I’m An Anarchist introduces ‘the San Franciscan rudeboy sound’ via the imaginary Wild 87 Radio and DJ Crash, before Michael (who now lives in LA) reminisces on the comfort of his hometown during the Ramones-esque Go Back Home. No wonder he misses his Golden City, where ‘all the skinheads sing my song’ and ‘everyone knows this town is mine’.

But by the chorus, he’s changed his tune: ‘I don’t wanna go.’ “That song is me [admitting] I can’t go back home, because that version of me doesn’t exist anymore,” he clarifies. “I probably could have done that forever, but at a certain point during that timeframe, I stopped growing. I hit a ceiling. I came here [to LA], got sober and was forced to deal with what was under that armour… sobriety has forced me to look at my defects, really.”

By song number nine, True Love (Is Hard To Find), Michael is still battling that calling card, surrounded in LA by ‘celebrities and all their filthy fucking habits’ and – just like he told K! in 2023 – worse weather (‘It’s too hot here’). But this isn’t simply a clash between past and present, mirrored through San Francisco vs. Los Angeles. Some chapters of his origin story transcend those old habits, and mean just as much to present-day Michael.

He shows K! his white water bottle, titled ‘YOFC’, the impetus behind party-rock cut Young Offenders. “Young Offenders Football Club,” Michael spells out. “I wrote that song for all my friends – my brothers – back home in San Francisco. You walk around the city and all of your friends work at the bars, the coffee shops. There’s great shows, and there’s amazing culture.”

Only eight songs prior, the frontman is panicking about his “biggest fear”, that ‘no-one even showed up’ to his funeral. After waxing lyrical about those friendships in Young Offenders, we reassure him that it seems like there’s nothing to worry about.

“You’re probably right!” he shrugs today. But it demonstrates how he’s still coming to terms with that side of his personality, the piece that can be crippled by the idea of being “lame”, a word he repeats multiple times throughout our conversation.

RUDE didn’t change things overnight. In fact, its recording process was characterised by numerous back-and-forths, namely between Michael and producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, The Mysterines). “He doesn’t give a fuck about your guidelines, and that’s challenging!” enthuses the singer, who took John’s advice throughout – in both directions: “‘I think you should redo it. Or you could tell me to fuck off…’”

While Michael and Spiritual Cramp navigate their path, we remind him that, for all his future funeral nightmares, he’s already made two stellar albums that will stand the test of time. They will outlive him. Has he considered that, through this band, his ideas are already immortal?

“I don’t worry about that,” he responds, calmly. And that is exactly the point.

Though the mouth-watering prospect of UK and European arena shows await with The Hives and Yard Act (“the council of sarcastic white guys”), Michael is learning to block out his surroundings, and be content with what he can’t control. RUDE will serve as a reminder of that journey, and the ongoing struggles that many people experience, trying to persevere through this muddled world.

In search of this simplicity, you need only look at how the insects go about their business, Michael concludes. “I’m more like a bug: ‘I must feed today. I must satiate the feeling of hunger that I feel at the moment.’ I’m a termite chasing after the wood chips.” Long may that chase continue, Mr. Bingham.

RUDE is out now via Blue Grape Music

Read this next:

• High Vis: “You can’t judge someone because of the privileges they’ve been given. It’s how you deal with those privileges”
• Spiritual Cramp: “At the end of my life, I want to make sure that I didn’t stand in my own way”
• Knocked Loose: “Sacrificing heaviness was never an option… As this band grows, it only gets more uncomfortable and extreme”