Spring King

“It’s been amazing,” he says. “We’ve been playing in loads of places that we’ve never been to as a band, and nearly every night we’ve been like four tickets off selling out the shows, and it’s amazing to see the responses from the crowds.”

Tarek, a drummer/singer/producer, formed Spring King in 2012, recruiting guitarists Peter Darlington (a high school friend) and Andy Morton (whom he met at a skate park) before seeking out bass player James Green through Facebook.

“Most of the time we just eat chocolate together and laugh and drink beer,” says Musa. “It is a pleasure to hang out with those guys – it’s never a chore, we all love each other.”

In true garage rock form, their name was picked at a time when Musa didn’t know if the band would even work.

“I do mixing and producing on the side and whenever I work with artists I always end up using too much reverb, specifically the spring reverb, and someone coined me the ‘spring king’ after years of using too much of that effect on everyone else’s music,” he explains. “So when it came to making my own music, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just call myself the Spring King because I use so much of it.’ It was really off the cuff.”

For the past two years, the Manchester four-piece have been slowly building momentum, releasing acclaimed singles and two EPs that have garnered a fair bit of attention. Their music has aired on triple j and FBi here in Oz, and has been championed by big time UK DJs Annie Mac and Zane Lowe – their track ‘City’ was famously the first song played on Apple Music’s Beats 1 station.

Spring King also boast an impressive tour history, including sets with the likes of Courtney Barnett, Slaves and Fidlar, as well as coveted slots at festivals including SXSW, The Great Escape, Reading Festival and the forthcoming Splendour In The Grass. With the growing hype surrounding the boys, there’s no time like the present to release their debut album, Tell Me If You Like To.

“Overall it’s quite a dark album,” Musa explains. “Lyrically it’s about coming of age and finding yourself. It’s the kind of album I would’ve wanted to hear when I was 16 or 17. That was always kind of in the back of my head, because I remember that era of my life was such an inspirational era and I was listening to a lot of new bands, so I wanted to write something that was kind of like a coming of age and a bit of an exploration, trying to find out who you are. So lyrically it’s quite dark and it’s quite intense. Energy-wise, there’s a lot of fast numbers on there which are quite garagey and heavy.

“There’s a song called ‘It’s So Dark’ on there, which is based off a conversation I had with my dad, like, quite a few years ago. We were watching TV and there were loads of war stories on the news and he was just like, ‘This is so dark.’ He’s always that guy that tells me that the world is going to shit, and that’s when I wrote that song – I just went to the keyboard and wrote ‘It’s So Dark’, just based off what he was telling me.”

Citing Bruce Springsteen, The Beach Boys and Arcade Fire as key influences, Spring King describe their music as “a balance between pop and garage rock”. The fact these Mancunians have been picking up speed across the music scene for two years, even without a record on sale, speaks volumes about their abilities as a live act – something Australia will soon witness as they play Splendour and co-headline two sideshows with Philadelphia punks Beach Slang.

“Everyone just says that Splendour is this incredible festival,” Musa says. “We play quite high-energy live shows with a lot of intensity, so expect to jump around and nod your head quite fast ’cause it’s heavy garage pop music.

“I really enjoy playing festivals ’cause I love that a person can just walk around and stumble across new music. I find that exciting, because you can see them when you’re playing – people walking through your tent and either stopping or carrying on, but it’s really cool that you see them pause and go, ‘Oh, what’s this?’ ’cause they’ve clearly never heard it. So I love that whole spontaneity of festivals, how you can just do that and you have all these options in front of you.”

[Spring King photo by Khalil Musa]