Pushing The Backseat Lovers onto the next chapter of what is shaping up to be an epic storybook of runaway, word-of-mouth hits, soul-searching song writing and an expanding, international family of fans, the band celebrate the release of their second album, Waiting To Spill – OUT NOW. The Utah four-piece and DIY alt-rock phenomenon presents a new collection of songs that stand as the finest and most intricate of their short, yet eventful career together as a band and as friends.

Revealing that a new album was on the way in the heat of August, The Backseat Lovers had already closed in on almost 400 million total worldwide streams with experience of main stage appearances at Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and The Great Escape, arena/stadium support slots with The Killers and Jack White and sell out tours in their native USA and through Europe all under their belts. Such gifts had all arrived, unexpectedly, on the back of one, DIY recorded and released album: 2019’s When We Were Friends.

The Backseat Lovers’ ejection seat propulsion out of Salt Lake City and into the hearts of music fans around the world would have been a head spinner for experienced, long-time band mates, but four, young musicians that barely still barely knew each other? The intensity of that experience, and the parallel process of growing into adulthood alone and together, with and away from the fans and the music, is what forms the intensely personal, fractured and satisfyingly whole second album.

Released today on Polydor, the album represents the four bandmates concerted, and overwhelmingly successful attempt, in the words of front man and co-songwriter, Joshua Harmon, “to make something that was honest and real, something that meant the world.” Joining The Backseat Lovers on such a personally and artistically important mission was six-time Grammy Award-winning producer, David Greenbaum (Paul McCartney, Gorillaz, Beck), helping to guide a band in experimental mood through the new and brave studio capabilities they had rising to the surface. The twelve, resulting, unrestrained songs, described by Harmon after the fact as “the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” form a rewarding experience of deep listening and complex moods.

The mega streaming, viral success story of Kilby Girl and the peppy single’s radio and stage-friendliness supercharged the home-recorded juggernaut of When We Were Friends, a record that only came together, piece-by-piece, out of curiosity and necessity for the brand-new band. Peeling back the lid on Waiting To Spill, and immediately encountering the undulating, babbling stream to raging torrent instrumental of Silhouette, it becomes bracingly clear that, whilst listeners are enjoying the same band, their message has changed and they’ve learned new tricks.

“The biggest production note of ‘Silhouette’ is the use of the doppler effect,” says Harmon, “We created a long loop of my voice droning on the same note,and bounced a massive loop of the single note. We then teamed up, two of us holding microphones facing one in the direction a car was coming from and one in the direction it was going to end up. The other two were driving the car and holding a big speaker out the side of the window, blaring the single E note. The doppler effect was captured, creating a natural pitch shift of the note from E to D, the key of the next song, ‘Close Your Eyes’.”

That a band and producer would go to such ends to satisfy their sonic cravings is a story easily drawn from the annals of vintage rock and roll excess, yet flowing from one, remarkable soundscape into the emotional weight of Close Your Eyes confirms The Backseat Lovers’ intent, not to bloat their craft with possibility, but to deftly use it to definite ends. Close Your Eyes itself, with the catalytic lyric “Do you want to be like your father?/The older you get, your head’s getting hotter” dials down the studio alchemy to allow the sense of early-adulthood confusion, a predominant album theme, to rise and pool on the surface.

Over two and a half years, The Backseat Lovers – including Harmon’s songwriting foil and dextrous lead guitarist/co-vocalist Jonas Swanson, co-founder and drummer, Juice Welch and bassist KJ Ward – navigated the false starts and let downs of the pandemic-era together, in isolation in California, conjuring Waiting To Spill’s magic. The depth of conversation in and outside the studio, plus both songwriters forcing themselves through existing comfort zones, wrangling with the future as well as the past, found the band entering territory less familiar. With previously stated influences across classic and folk rock falling away, The Backseat Lovers naturally found territory closer to the worlds inhabited by esoteric alt-rock-indie stalwarts such as Wilco and Radiohead.

The statement in releasing Growing/Dying as the first single from Waiting To Spill said everything about a band in a process of thrilling reorientation, tearing at their obvious melodic capabilities with fractured guitars, cut tapes and a hail of feedback, yet it’s still the songwriting that shines brightest through it all. Words I Used follows. This time sat at the piano and another song that skates, happily, right over the five-minute mark, gently finding its way through a confluence of ideas that were cut, copied and pasted from different parts of The Backseat Lovers’ songbook. It’s a state that becomes obvious when pointed out by the band as the track goes from lonely bar room insularity to sugar-rush folk-pop, replete with vocal harmonies, then back into isolated, acoustic tenderness.

“We were hitting mallets on a lounge chair and slapping on books and stuff like that,” says Welch when asked about the similarly organically-formed Follow The Sound. “Honestly,” he continues, “Finding obscure things in an Airbnb to record and finding cool sounds is almost as fun as playing a drum kit.” Between the cool, fresh-air gaps in the song, honky-tonk keys, wall-of-sound guitars, Welch’s innovative percussion and Harmon’s impassioned vocals, the song sits as an unassuming album highlight and portrait of the band’s peaking confidence, letting their songs take them where they have no choice but to follow.

Snowbank Blues, an echoing, fuzzed-up cut of smudged, wire brush-drummed Americana benefits from acceptance of such fate, eschewing the road towards a straight-up, middle order acoustic mood and instead following the route to a song enriched by its imperfections. A false sense of security falls over the first, acoustically-driven bars of Patient Ocean in an entirely different way as The Backseat Lovers go widescreen, taking the tranquil opening credits as the cue to fill the picture with layers of expressive, unhurried harmony, soul-crying wails and peals of e-bow guitars.

Considering the band’s main stage successes, and invincibility when it comes to gelling in the throes of live performance, the delicacy and vulnerability of low-lit tracks, not least album closer, Viciously Lonely, whets the appetite for, if it was possible, a new era of intimacy when these songs are performed live. The unmistakeable, unfakeable connection with gathered fans, whether in the US or in venues of increasing scale in Europe, is set to reach new heights with Waiting To Spill’s open wounds and communal catharsis out in the world.

Coupled with the link up with visual collaborator, Kohana Wilson for the hand-drawn and animated video for Growing/Dying, The Backseat Lovers return to photographer, Tony Ehnle and his film photographs from the 70’s to set the band’s visual identity for perhaps the most important period of their indominable rise. Having been largely undiscovered until the band was introduced to his work through a friend, Ehnle’s enigmatic, documentary shots of unnamed places, each showing only traces of human touch, reflects the senses of empathy, isolation, discovery and freedom that listeners will find on their ride through Waiting To Spill.

Following the release of the album, the band heads out on a sold-out US Tour, returning to Europe next March with tickets for all venues selling fast. All of the confirmed The Backseat Lovers UK & Ireland Spring 2023 Tour dates are as follows:

Wed 8 March – O2 Ritz, Manchester
Thu 9 March – O2 Academy, Birmingham
Fri 10 March – QMU, Glasgow
Sun 12 March – Vicar Street, Dublin
Tue 14 March – Stylus, Leeds
Wed 15 March – SWX, Bristol
Thu 16 March – O2 Kentish Town Forum, London