Release Control: Clash Meets Spring King

Tarek Musa on the group creativity that fuels their superb new album...

Spring King emerged with the kind of backstory us journalists live for. The garage rockers are the brainchild of band vocalist and drummer Tarek Musa, who spent his teenage years hanging out with mates The 1975 at Manchester skate parks and house parties, recording music on his “crap computer.” (“At the time it was so budget”.) Musa singlehandedly wrote Spring King’s early material, recording some of it in his parent’s now infamous bathroom and scrapping any tracks he didn’t manage to nail down within one day.

The story behind the band’s recent second album, ‘A Better Life’, however is a different tale. In the past Musa had singlehandedly written, recorded and played the majority of Spring King’s material, this time the four members contributed equally, bouncing riffs and lyrics off each other. As a result, they’ve created a much deeper and personal experience.

“This is the first time Spring King have collaborated fully together,” Musa tells us. “It was quite a weird relationship to go into after being on the road for three years already to say, ok let’s write our first song together.”

He’s speaking to Clash on board a train from Manchester to London where he’s on the way to playing drums on a friend’s musical project, something so new it doesn’t even have a name yet. Was it difficult for him to relinquish the ultimate control of Spring King and let his band mates in on the creation process?

“It was at first,” he admits. “Spring King was my baby for a long time but at I knew for us to grow we had to do something different. I knew we’d still have a certain sound though because I’m producing it. For example, ‘Echo Chamber’ is [guitarist] Pete’s song. He wrote the whole thing but the production on it is what steers it back to being Spring King.”

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The band recorded ‘A Better Life’ in a tiny Worcestershire market town and were keen not to repeat the rushed, stressful experience of their 2016 debut, ‘Tell Me If You Like To’. “Recording the first album was sandwiched between two tours,” he explains. “We only had three weeks to get an album together. We already had four or five songs but we knew we had to come up with more. Songs like ‘Rectifier’ were made in the studio totally on the fly.”

This time the band took it slow, turning down shows to spend more time in the studio. “We wrote ‘Animal’ first and that determined the direction of the record,” he says. “All the lyrics in that song are completely improvised. I started freestyling lyrics and they haven’t changed. It felt exciting. We wanted to keep that mentality and ethos for the rest of the album.”

Immediately, ‘Animal’ set the tone. Compared to their debut, ‘A Better Life’ is a much heavier, darker beast. Influenced by guitarist Pete Darlington’s new found passion for Pantera and Slayer, the riffs are meatier, the pace more urgent. ‘Animal’ slotted perfectly into live sets where the band would push themselves to their physical limits on a nightly basis, sometimes to the point where Musa would throw up in the wings from the sheer effort of keeping up.

It was an immediate hit with the fans who went batty from the get go, assuaging any butterflies the band had about introducing their new music to the world. “I was genuinely a bit worried about how the new tracks would go down live because when people know a set of songs they just come to the shows for that,” he admits. “I always judge an album by how the fans react to it when we play it live. About three weeks before the album came out we were like let's try ‘Let's Drink’ live, and everyone was going apeshit. We hadn't released it yet and the crowd were jumping so much for it.”

The result of four brains pulling together instead of one, lyrically, ‘A Better Life’ delves deeper into a range of personal topics that are close to the band’s hearts, touching on mental illness, in particular Musa ‘s own anxiety (“I don’t even want to open that jar of worms”), and women’s rights. The track ‘Thunder’ was written about the suicide of a close family friend. “I remember I was writing it and crying at the same time, he says sadly. “I’m playing the piano and I remember coming to tears because of what was coming out my mouth. I didn’t know if I wanted to write it, or if I should, but I tried to make it into something that leaves a good memory.”

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During the EU referendum, the band’s hometown Manchester had the strongest remain vote in the North West. Each member of Spring King voted emphatically to stay and their subsequent concerns and frustrations are splashed all over the new tracks. ‘Echo Chamber’ talks about “terror on the streets” while on ‘Us Vs Them’, Musa sings: “I can feel my whole world changing.”

“Immigration's a big thing for me,” he says. “I’m half-Polish, half-Lebanese, born in Manchester. Growing up I always felt a little bit of racism in some way, I was bullied and had to move schools a few times. My Mum came to this country she didn’t speak any English she was a cleaner in a convent. When my dad moved to his county he was selling jeans out of a suitcase, I believe strongly in multiculturalism and diversity.”

While Musa admits that at the moment the UK’s outlook is bleak – “it’s a massive shame for the country, a huge fucking disaster” – he’s keen to point out that ‘A Better Life’ is imbued with a sense of unbridled positivity. “We keep to ourselves in the industry but when we sit down in the van together, me, Pete and James [Green, bassist] will discuss politics all day,” he explains. “Until now we didn’t know how to put that across in our music.”

“This album is dark but with a sense of hope attached to it. We didn’t want it to be negative. It’s about living a utopian life and overcoming difficult times, whether it’s politics or a sense of hopelessness, we wanted to attach positivity to everything we wrote.”

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Words: Dannii Leivers

Catch Spring King at the following shows:

January
19 London O2 Forum Kentish Town
26 Manchester O2 Ritz

For tickets to the latet Spring King shows click HERE.

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