First Day of Spring

Having originally formed in Southend-on-Sea, now London based band First Day of Spring are a five piece band, with frontman and lyricist Samuel Jones. Their aim with their music is to make the listener take on the emotions and feeling of their music through their frequent exploration of energies, ranging from fast paced to melancholic and reflective. Their new EP, ‘Be My Hospital’ was released on the 9th of August 2024, and is comprised of four tracks. The first song, ‘You’re blue, I’m Blue’, is an emotive and reflective song about tribes, and their ability to co-exist. The band chose to record the single in a way more similar to that of a live show, which adds layers to the raw power of the track. Having had the pleasure of catching a live gig in the Strongroom Bar in Shoreditch, with an energetic and engaging stage presence, their recorded sound is very clearly drawn from the unreplicable experience of a live event. Though many of the smaller details, such as the singer’s use of a vintage ribbon microphone and the drummer’s emotion filled solos, are impossible to capture in recording, which is why we’d certainly recommend watching a live show.

Interview with Samuel Jones.

How do you translate your ideas into your songs?

For me, back in the day, we did a lot of it in the rehearsal space, and it was jams, and they would progress to something, but now, there’s a lot more structure. I wouldn’t call myself a singer-songwriter, but it’s more song writing-ish, so there’s structure. If I’m being totally honest, my process is; I have a mac and if an arrangement comes into my head, which can come from nowhere, which is the same for everyone, I will immediately get it down, I’ll be out in the street somewhere and I’ll hear something and I’ll run into the corner of the shop and I’ll write a voice note like I’m mad or something. Either that, or if I’m in my house, then I’ll just record it through the monitors in my mac, really terrible recordings, but you just need to get it down, as quick as possible. I write on my acoustic, which I’m happy about because I’m not, like, hiding behind effects, like the core of the song is actually a song which happens when it’s just you and the guitar. So it’s much more that, now, and if it sound good when I put it onto an audio recording on my laptop, then I’ll take it into the rehearsal space and then usually I listen to everybody else, but if I know something’s good, you just go with it really.

If time travel had existed, what music era would you like to have travelled back in time to have your band in?

Probably, like, the furthest I could get, because I was a nineties kid, I was born in 1994, and that stuff is still kind of there, you know what I mean? It’s still not too far away, and the 90s in Manchester, for example, is probably not that different, whereas I’d like to go somewhere completely otherworldly. Like when civilisation was, and people had no information. Otherwise, the sixties, to be fair, because there’s so much there. If you were weird in the sixties, people were kind of shocked by you, you know, whereas everyone’s weird. I love that picture of I think it’s Sid Vicious on the tube, next to a load of businessmen and they’re all looking at him. I love that shit. You don’t really get that anymore. You go on the overground and everyone’s a fucking weirdo. So probably, yeah, as far as possible.

What inspired your band’s name, The First Day of Spring?

We were struggling for a name for ages and our old guitarist, Charlie, and we were sitting there struggling to come up with a name and a couple of people came up with, like, jokes, and I though, I don’t want that. And Charlie said to me, why don’t you look at the names of songs that would work? And we had a song called First Day of Spring, and I thought I liked the lengthiness of it, it’s not like a ‘The … something’ which is a thing of the past. And names aswell are trending, there’s like, The Viagra Boys, and then, Soft Boys. I like a band called ‘The Pains of being Pure at Heart’, and I liked the lengthiness of it, and though you couldn’t relate it to any other band name, and it sounded quite nice.

It sounds quite poetic, aswell, like Keats or something.

Yeah. People think we’re like, hippies, before they come and see us, like we’re gonna make some sort of hippie music. To me, it’s almost like, quite a cold day, which is contradicted into the actual name. I don’t think anyone’s got a name like that, really. I quite like it.