This Is Just The Start: Spielbergs Talk 'Running All The Way Home' And Life On The Road
Tuesday, 17 September 2019
Written by Huw Baines
Regrets, like inches around your gut or degrees of despair behind your eyes, tend to stack up as you get older. That Frank Sinatra’s full of shit, man.
The title track of ‘Running All The Way Home’, Spielbergs’ new EP, knows all about regret. “I’m feeling so useless, just let me go back to the start,” Mads Baklien half murmurs before falling face-first into a euphoric rush of guitars. It’s a dynamic that the Norwegian trio have perfected in their short time together. “I have been looking at my life that way for a long time,” Baklien says. “I think I'm letting go of that now.”
In truth, Spielbergs function as part of that process. While Running All The Way Home is Baklien’s attempt to reconcile the person he is now with a person who has hurt others romantically in the past, his band performs the same function in a creative sense. After coming up in Oslo’s punk and hardcore scenes, and jobbing in several indie bands, Baklien, bassist Stian Brennskag and drummer Christian Løvhaug formed the group after adapting to normal lives: work, family and responsibilities in place of guitars, studios and live shows.
In the beginning, as they once put it in an interview with Stereogum, it was an “adult youth club thing”. But they soon wrote songs that wouldn’t survive if they were forced to exist only between the walls of their practice space. Their first single, We Are All Going To Die, arrived overseas in the spring of 2018 and it was like being kicked in the chest by a Chuck Taylor belonging to a member of Japandroids. Spielbergs could not stay hidden.
“People began to ask us if we could play and we had to say yes,” Baklien says. “We had to make a choice there and then if we were going to be a band that said no to stuff. And I guess then I had to let go of that dream of never playing live. I have accepted it now, and I'm happy with the way things have turned out.”
Spielbergs quickly became a going concern. ‘Running All The Way Home’ is their third release in 18 months, bookending their ‘Distant Star’ EP and anthemic debut album ‘This Is Not The End’. Beginning on September 18 in Newcastle they are about to navigate another UK tour, following up a popular spring run and a few support slots with emo experimentalists Foxing. Over that time, the band have developed fresh relationships with their music, helping them to understand it as an ever-changing thing.
“When you make songs in the rehearsal space and then record them, you kind of let them go a bit,” Baklien says. “You release them and then when you go on tour, you have to live through the songs every single night. They become more of a physical thing. You have to really carry it every night, and I like that. Actually, you get a more concrete relationship with the songs.”
Along with Running All The Way Home, the band’s latest EP is home to two further new songs in Oh No and Fake A Reaction. All three are certified ragers, with the tracklisting filled out by offcuts from the ‘This Is Not The End’ sessions, including the fabulous title track that never was. The leftovers, though, aren’t the focus for Spielbergs. Baklien’s first love will always be writing and recording, so it’s the new stuff that’s kept him going.
“I have been waiting for the possibility to write some more songs for a year, I guess,” he says. “At first I was kind of skeptical about releasing this EP because the very first idea was only releasing the leftover material from the album, which in my opinion didn't quite come out well from the mix together with the rest. But then we got to record a couple of new songs and also remix the songs from the album sessions, even recording some new guitars and stuff. It was like a vacation, to get this little breathing room between shows.”
He adds: “I was anxious because I know what touring is all about, I went on a couple of tours in my earlier years. And it was like, ‘Oh, I'm going back to this lifestyle now.’ But it's been really good, and I guess I was surprised by how many people showed up to our shows and how great everything was. It was a positive surprise for me. But, with that said, I still like just staying at home and writing songs the most. That probably will never change.”
There is something righteous about Spielbergs’ thirtysomething guitar worship, and its cocktail of pyrotechnic choruses and escapism definitely favours sharks, aliens, dinosaurs and Nazi-punching archaeology professors over prestige dramas. Their music is as giddy and loud as their day-to-day is quiet, and there’s little chance of that changing any time soon. If we’re all going to die, then at least we’re going out with a killer soundtrack.
‘Running All The Way Home’ is out October 25 on By The Time It Gets Dark.
Spielbergs Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Wed September 18 2019 - NEWCASTLE Think Tank Underground
Thu September 19 2019 - GLASGOW Poetry Club, SWG3
Sat September 21 2019 - BIRMINGHAM Flapper
Sun September 22 2019 - MANCHESTER YES
Mon September 23 2019 - SHEFFIELD Picture House Social
Tue September 24 2019 - LEEDS Oporto
Thu September 26 2019 - BRISTOL Louisiana
Fri September 27 2019 - LONDON Oslo
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