Spring King (UK) on debut LP Tell Me If You Like To, touring with Courtney Barnett & Splendour in the Grass

Next month, Australian crowds will be introduced to Spring King for the first time. The British four piece are set to perform their debut Australian shows at Splendour in the Grass and alongside Beach Slang at their east coast sideshows, a perfect opportunity to dole out their now-popular chaotic post-punk rock show in some excellent venues.

For now though, the concept of bringing their music out to the other side of the globe is merely an exciting idea in their imagination, as we chat through the next few months while out at The Great Escape. Our interview takes place outside Patterns, a venue overlooking the beach and coincidentally, where the band is to play later on that evening.

“This will be our first time having that experience, really.” Peter Darlington says of the buzz that comes with heading out to such an alien part of the world. “I think Zan Rowe from triple j saw us at SXSW last year and then she put us in her Top Tips of the Festival or something, which was great, and then they started playing us.”

“Since then, we’ve seen a lot of stuff come out from over there, tweets and stuff. It’s very surreal to think that on the other side of the planet, people are thinking about our songs and playing our songs!”

Their connection to Australia has been growing bit by bit, with last year’s UK tour alongside Courtney Barnett bringing them into the Milk Records circle, also introducing Spring King to Fraser A. Gorman, who they now count as a good mate.

Tarek Musa notes that their time on the road with Barnett gave the band invaluable levels of experience when it came to putting on strong live shows on a variety of stages.

“I feel like the Courtney Barnett tour we did was the first entry into serious touring,” he says. “Before that, we’d played maybe three shows here and two there but on the Courtney Barnett tour, we were playing bigger stages than we’d ever played before, with really professional bands. They were really good to us and they made us push through and keep up and keep going.”

“After that, we sat back and realised, ‘Okay – there’s a lot of places we should be playing and getting out to’. That made us push ourselves a bit to play harder and tour harder. I think that ever since last year, we’ve just been non-stop. We’ve had a couple of weeks off here and there, but we’ve always had a few shows on the go.”

Photo: Facebook
Photo: Facebook

Last year saw the band impress at SXSW and, as that particular festival tends to do, their time in America conjured up a level of positive momentum that has continued to spur Spring King forward. Gaining a reputation for being a formidable headline act, the band comments on elements of their live show they’re enjoying the most as this year has continued to roll on.

“It’s nice having people who know our songs come to the shows,” Andrew Morton says. “That’s the best bit. Especially when you look out into the crowd and you see a little mosh pit, or you see a group of people singing along to every single word. It’s an amazing feeling.”

“It helps us so much.” Darlington agrees. “It’s good to see people who are genuinely interested in watching our show, instead of just coming in and going, or only coming because there’s only a surface level appeal to it. It’s nice when people stick around and they’re genuinely interested.”

“I hate watching videos of us,” he laughs. “I really don’t like it, but the other day I thought I’d just go onto YouTube and look back over the last couple of years and we actually have developed a lot! Especially in the last year, because we’ve done some serious touring, that experience has really taken us to the next level.”

Aside from a hectic run of UK and European festival dates throughout their summer, plus their jaunt down under for Splendour, the band currently has all eyes on the release of their much-anticipated debut album, Tell Me If You Like To (due out this Friday).

Well aware of how busy their lives on the road are about to get, their excitement surrounding the release of this album is undeniable as we sit outside on this particularly sunny Brighton afternoon.

“We’ve been really lucky to have had some of these shows recently,” they all agree. “This first headline tour has been an absolute dream but once the album’s out, that’s when we’re really going to start going to ground. We’ll go out into Europe a bit more and go about the UK, back to the US and Australia.”

“The songs that we have on this album were kind of done already, they were already written for the most part. We like to consider that there’s a driving force behind every song so people are always moving, even if it’s a slow song. They’re still wanting to jump around – we think that’s very important.”

For Musa in particular, he’s enjoying the ride of being able to share the music with as many new ears as possible.

“We might do another tour maybe over here, but we’re just going to enjoy it and play the songs live. We’d like to go out to America again. SXSW [for example] is a great example of how there is just so much music in the world coming into this one place and everyone is just having a really good time.”

Too true.

Spring King appear at Splendour in the Grass this year on July 23rd. They also play with Beach Slang at the following venues:

July 20th | Oxford Art Factory, SYDNEY
July 24th | Corner Hotel, MELBOURNE

 

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