Spring King
Tell Me If You Like To
June 10 2016 (Island)
8/10
Words: Kenny Davies
Spring King hauled their high energy garage-punk guitars out Manchester and into the nation's ears when they were bestowed the honour of being the first artist to be played on the newly formed Apple Beats 1 radio station hosted by Zane Lowe in 2015. The song was 'City' and that's where the band's debut album 'Tell Me If You like To' kicks off.
After the blast out of the blocks pace of 'City', two more familiar songs appear in the shape of 'Detroit', a song for the open road with the roof down and sun blazing, and the fast, frantic-paced 'Who Are You' - which comes with its own sax solo. It's the perfect start for the band who have steadily gone from strength to strength with their 100-miles-an-hour anthems, so having the slower more poppy sound of 'It's So Dark' and the darker-tinged plodding of 'Take Me Away' puts the brakes on which the Spring King faithful might not be used to.
The band hit top gear again in the doom filled 'Demons' and the paranoid escapism of 'Rectifier'. DIY attitude and fast ramshackle sounding songs are what brought them nationwide attention, so to finish the album with the more polished - safer, some may say - sound of the rampaging 'Tell Me If You Like To' and the ode to The Beach Boys', 'The Summer', kind of takes away what Spring King are all about. It's not that the last few are bad songs - blast them out on a summer's day and it will be the perfect soundtrack - it's just that it rather makes for a disjointed album. Live the band will undoubtedly bring these songs alive, encouraging crowd participation and turning them into hands in the air anthems; the leap to big arena stages can not be far off, as to paraphrase a line from 'Who Are You', Mr Musa and his compatriots are surely kicking and punching their way to the top.
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