Garage rock four-piece Spring King have just released their anticipated debut album ‘Tell Me If You Like To’, and are here to tell us all about it. The UK outfit have toured with Courtney Barnett, FIDLAR and Slaves, and have proved exactly why they’re grabbing everyone’s attention by dropping one hell of an album.
Singer Tarek Musa, bassist James Green and guitarist Peter Darlington have run us through each track, giving us a pretty good insight into what makes them tick. Earlier in the year, they also told us all about the gear that went into making this album.
Physical copies can be picked up here, and it’s also available on iTunes. If you’re in the UK this September you can also grab tickets for their tour, and follow along with the band on their Facebook page.
CITY
Tarek: ’City’ was recorded at my house early last year when we were recording the They’re Coming After You EP. It was originally half the speed when I did the demo of it on my iPhone. I wanted it to be really simple and kinda like a White Stripes song, very stripped-back and raw. When it came down to recording it I decided to try it double the tempo and it just felt a lot more exciting. I tracked it in the house using an SM57, an SE2200A and a C1000 mic, as well as a really cheap drum mic pack which consisted of three microphones for toms and kick drum. The whole song was recorded that day but took a couple of days to mix.
DETROIT
Tarek: I wrote the chorus to ‘Detroit’ a while ago, maybe around February 2015. It was sitting on my iPhone for a long time, but every time I played guitar at home I’d always end up playing that chorus, which for me meant I should try and approach it as a song at some point. We recorded this one at Chapel Studios, multi-tracked and just like ‘City’, very quickly. The drums were done in the main live room (I asked the studio for an external monitor and keyboard so I could edit right next to the kit) with me on producing and engineering duties. We didn’t have any external engineers, except for a cool assistant Jonny Swailes who probably thought I was a bit nuts taking it all on myself. All of Pete’s guitars on this track (and the album for that matter) were recorded upstairs in one of the studio bedrooms; we felt a lot more at home up there, a lot more like how we’d do things back in the house.
WHO ARE YOU?
Tarek: ’Who Are You?’ was done over at my house too, and was an earlier single that we self released. When it came to putting it on the album, I remixed it a little so that it fit in nicely with the rest of the tracks sonically. I’m always challenging myself as a mixer, and getting this track to fit was tricky at first as there wasn’t such a nice room to record in back home. The bass on this was DI’d and the guitars too, but going through my Golden Age Pre 73 super hot. I love the preamp, it does the job well.
IT’S SO DARK
Tarek: ’It’s So Dark’ came about in 2012. It was one of the first songs I wrote for Spring King and I remember writing it on my Yamaha Electone Organ. It was meant to be the kind of thing someone would say to a friend in need, but spoken bluntly and honestly
James: I’ve been itching to play this live for such a long time, I remember tracking the backing vocals in the chorus in the studio absolutely losing our minds. The majority of the time I spent in the studio I had that chorus stuck in my head.
TAKE ME AWAY
Tarek: Pete played the drums on this song which was funny at the time but it worked! I was in the control room doing some edits and I could hear him playing that beat. We recorded it to a click track pretty quickly – I think I might have already had the rough guide guitar parts in a session for playback. It’s a bit surf at times in terms of guitar tones, and I love the way James plays bass on this one, super palm-muted and plucked. James actually plays some piano on this track too.
James: This song was such a nice change up to a lot of the other tracks on the album, with a lot of scope for more dynamic playing and quite a sparse arrangement. The piano parts were so much fun, if a bit Elton John at times!
DEMONS
Pete: ‘Demons’ is an old one for us – it originally came out on our first EP of the same name. When it came to deciding what tracks would make the album, we kept returning to it as lyrically and sonically it fit the feel we wanted to create. I’ve also always felt that it never quite receeved the attention it deserved. The guitar solo after the first chorus is one of my favourite passages of music we’ve ever released.
RECTIFIER
Pete: Weirdly this song started life on the piano. Tarek played what would become the main riff a few times but then kind of left it there. It stuck in my head so I worked it out on a guitar and played it over and over again. When Tarek came back in, he started jamming along on the drums. I think at that point we both realised that it had potential. I had no idea it would be the first single though!
TELL ME IF YOU LIKE TO
Tarek: I love playing this song live. Pete’s guitars for this whole album were done using my cousin’s Gibson SG and I can really hear it on this track. We did try many other guitars first but always came back to the SG for his rhythm parts. This one was written in the studio when me and Pete were jamming. He was on the drums while we had a break from recording and I picked up his guitar, and that’s how the rhythmic guitar stop and starts came about.
THE SUMMER
Tarek: The chorus for this song was written so long ago, I’d say 2012/2013 at some point. In the past we’d rehearsed various versions of this song but never got it down so we left it to one side. When the album was coming round we decided to revisit it, and try to rewrite it. It was always heavily inspired by the songwriting of Brian Wilson, as well as some Springsteen tunes.
HEAVEN
James: This is another personal favourite from those recording sessions. Pete’s absolutely nailed this; from the chugging guitar lines to the anthemic vocals in the chorus and middle eight, it seemed like a perfect way to round off the album.
Pete: I wrote the chorus for this song while I was living in New York about five years ago. At the time I was living in Queens with friends and sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Every night before I fell asleep I would write a little journal entry… sometimes I would just draw something, other times I would write pages and pages of stuff. This one night I came home drunk and wrote ‘Heaven is when you know yourself’. I woke up to it the next day and it’s stuck with me ever since.
