The Backseat Lovers: On The Fast Track
From seeing two exciting and unpredictable The Backseat Lovers shows in London over the past year, it almost came as no surprise when our interview had an unconventional start. Making my way into the band’s central London hotel, the commotion of a broken lift could not escape my attention, nor could the future knowing that it had temporarily trapped lead singer Josh Harmon in its clutches. This commotion was not the only thing that separated this Utah-native band from the bustling business lunchers around them. Instead, it was their collection of rugged ball caps, immaculate facial hair, and quietly calm demeanour that marked the band’s presence.
While their new album, ‘Waiting to Spill’ doesn’t arrive until 26th October, the band played a secret one-off gig at London’s Omeara on 12th October. When asked why London again, and why now, guitarist Jonas Swanson boiled it down to something very simple. “We like playing here, and it’s going to be a while before we can make it back.”And while “a while” feels like a very relative term considering The Backseat Lovers will grace London once again in March next year, the 300 super fans filling the space last week had nothing to complain about, especially in getting a few sneak previews of new BSL music. One unreleased track, in particular, ‘Slowing Down,’ has been a staple of their live shows for… a while. “I think that's a song all four of us have always felt very, very connected to in a live format,” Harmon begins. “I think it's the newest song that we've written on the whole album. So it was the freshest feeling song once we were able to start touring again. And we always like to play the most recent songs generally. It's just kind of how we are as songwriters.”
Playing this track live also helped to inform its final recording, with bassist KJ Ward going back to re-track his part. In general, though, getting to play live is a relatively new experience for the band. “It's quite a strange process when you look at the whole of it. Because when we very first started, we hadn't really played any shows. And we just like recorded some songs. And then the entire pandemic was happening while we were finishing this album, so we couldn't test them out. And now we're starting to do that a little bit more. So usually we don't test them out live, just because of the nature of timing.”
Image: Travis Bailey
The band gained the majority of their fanbase over TikTok, largely during the pandemic. Because of this fast-rising organic growth, most shows with The Backseat Lovers on the bill have been headlines with a sprinkle of major festivals. Because of this popularity, the support slots that they secured were for some of the largest rock acts in the world. The Killers and Jack White. “Those were really great opportunities to have,” Harmon states. “I think we all learned a lot about what it is to be an act at that stage [in their career] and the types of venues that they play.”
We moved our conversation along to the new album, starting with the album release trailer. This video is a visual series of isolated natural landscapes juxtaposed briefly at the end by a concert shot of the crowd and band. “Looking at the trailer specifically, a lot of the imagery that we decided to use for it wasn’t something that was specifically chosen for a narrative purpose. It just feels very personal for some reason,” Harmon explains. “So I think that naturally that feeling of isolation, especially with the song that Jonas chose as the backing music, speaks volumes to the emotions that you might feel in relation to this album. But I do think the juxtaposition is also just kind of naturally where we are. There are a lot of quiet, still moments in life and a lot of really intense, in some ways good, moments as well.”
Harmon went on to add that making the album as a whole was an extremely intense, yet liberating experience. “When I write songs on my own, and when we write songs together, it's very similar in the place that it comes from emotionally. It's a very, very personal thing. And this record is definitely the most personally involved I've ever been in anything, artistically and in terms of life in general. It just feels very, very emotionally personal, to me and to all of us. And I think that because of that, and how much I have held in the songs, it was really difficult at times to have so much weight and vulnerability within a song.”
Not only did the band grow within themselves to create their sophomore album, but also grew their team. After self-producing their debut ‘When We Were Friends’, The Backseat Lovers invited producer David Greenbaum, who has collaborated with Beck, Jenny Lewis, U2 and Gorillaz, to help them fully realise their vision. “We had never worked with a producer before. So we were very… sceptical isn’t the right word… We were very intentional. And so talking to a bunch of different producers over the phone or meeting in person, and doing a test song here or there and just seeing if there's good chemistry. And we had talked to a bunch of producers that were really amazing people and very amazingly talented people,” Harmon pauses. “Then we were getting pretty close to deciding when we got a cold email from David's manager. We got on the phone with him and within the first 10 minutes, we're like, this dude understands, like really, really fully all of what we want to do with the demos that we had sent him. So it was very emotionally affirming that this guy gets what we're trying to say and we don't even know him. I think that was the moment for me when we decided we wanted to work with him.”
Moving further into the overall creative vision of the album, Harmon was keen to divulge the details of how they decided upon the cover photo for ‘Waiting to Spill’. “The photographer's name is Tony Ehnle and he shot the first album cover as well. He's an amazing photographer who did most of his work in the ‘70s and is my good friend’s uncle. Tony basically passed down all these photos to him that he took and they're all on 35-millimetre slides. I was friends with him in my senior year of high school and we were looking for an album cover; I wasn't really intentionally looking at these photos for that reason, but we were just at his house looking through his slides and putting them into the little magnifying thing that lights them up and shows you the full image. I think it's very obvious in looking at it, but it's a very nostalgic feeling photo… when you're young and you're playing pretend and you're in your zone. And personally, and I think for all of us when we get into the zone musically, it's very comparable to playing pretend when you're a little kid.”
Image: Travis Bailey
They all agreed that this childlike, imaginative state was one of the things that helps them to process the difficulties that come with growing up. But like so many before them, Harmon states that growing up is largely informed by experimentation and the constant strive to become better musicians and better people. “I feel like as musicians, we're constantly trying to push ourselves to display different styles of music. We’re never really playing the same type of music. We're always trying to see what we can play, we're just kind of experimenting. We just play what comes to mind really, especially when all four of us are together. And to me, that really leaves room for anything in the future.”
To wrap up the conversation, I asked what was perhaps a cruelly open-ended question. “Is there anything else you think the band should know about the Backseat Lovers?” After a several-second pause and a sheepishly sincere grin, Josh answered. “We’re really bad at summing things up,” he laughs. “I think the only thing I would say is that I want to extend a thank you to anybody that wants to listen to the music with an open ear and an open heart. When we were making the music, that’s the state we were in and it's an honour to us for anybody to share the same experience.”
