“When you play a show like today, you feel like you want to do it again,” starts Pete Darlington an hour after Spring King’s set at Reading Festival. “I want to do this all the time and it’s about trying to realise that. It’s about the music, ultimately. If the music’s good enough and it reaches people, it’ll happen. It just means we have to get better at writing. We have to get better at playing, but that’s ok. That’s within our grasp. We can control that. A lot of the bigger stuff we can’t control but we can control how good a song is because that’s what we’ve been training to do.” The band already have their sights set on writing more music before the year is out. “It’s aiming to move an audience more and get more emotion out from both sides of the fence,” adds Tarek Musa. “Get it higher and higher.”
The band have quickly grown from small scale art-pop band to something much larger. Last year they turned up at Reading Festival for their set on the Festival Republic stage in a Honda with a flat tyre. They parked between two splitter vans. This year they had one of their own but parked between two sleeper vans. “We wouldn’t have it any other way,” Andy Morton laughs. “I felt the same today as I did last year. This nervous energy, because it’s an incredible opportunity. I never notice the size of the tent. I just notice the feel of the crowd. Last year we had a great crowd, this year was incredible, what more do you want? What more do you need? A good crowd, a good pair of speakers and maybe some good drumsticks,” offers Tarek. That’s not to say they aren’t getting ideas for bigger stations. Sure, the band may be making up their bucket list as they go along, but they’re getting moments to look to the future and dream.
“We played with Wolf Alice at The Forum in March and it was an amazing show. It was busy and the people were great,” starts James Green. “That was the one where it felt like we can do this. It’s fine. I’ve only aspired to play at 100 capacity rooms where it’s relatively busy and then we watched Wolf Alice, they’re just the most amazing band. They’re the most down to people, they’re grafting and they deserve everything they get. I came off stage, watched them and realised ‘yeah, this is something we should aspire to. We should aim for bigger venues’. It really inspired me. We should be aiming for these kind of shows.”
Of course it happened at a Wolf Alice show. That band, alongside the likes of Drenge, Slaves and Peace, have been setting the scene alight for years now, but there’s always a need for fresh meat. It’s time for a new wave. Spring King have been serving their pop apprenticeship for long enough to be the catalyst. Now they’re leading the way.
[sc name=”pull” text=”To see it all come to fruition is really special.”]
“When I was growing up, I always felt so inspired by bands and scenes,” offers Pete. “I was really into American hardcore music, Black Flag and stuff like that. The idea that bands would tour together, in that kinda way, felt so inspiring to me.” You want proof? Just look at Spring King’s upcoming October tour and who they’re bringing out on the road with ‘em. “I feel like we’ve tried to recreate that. Just play with people we get along with. People we support, genuinely. There’s nothing more to it than that. We love what they do, so let’s just take them out on the road with us.”
“We’ve got The Big Moon, who we’ve known for a while. Kagoule who we’ve seen at different shows. The Magic Gang who supported us years ago and ever since, we’ve been growing together and Get Inuit. They did our last tour with us and are legends,” starts Tarek with James adding “we were all blown away with them on our May tour, we’re happy to have them back. The other guys, we were praying one of them would say yes. Then they all said yes. It’s a dream come true.”
Floating the idea that Spring King must be very confident in their live show to bring all these great bands out with them is met with laughter and a “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I think they’ll push us,” reasons Pete. “When you’re playing with bands of such a high quality, it pushes you to go even further, go even crazier.”
And if all else fails, “we’ll just turn the guitars really loud and blame it on our sound guy.”
“We’ve not, geographically, been from any scene. Even though we’re all from Manchester, we’ve never been part of it. To be able to recreate that while we’re out on tour is really cool,” offers James with Andy adding, “We’re playing with a lot of bands we’ve developed with over time so to see it all come to fruition is really special.” [sc name=”stopper”]