Growing up is hard enough without being a flourishing indie rock band with a near sold-out North American tour and two highly acclaimed albums under your belt. In response, The Backseat Lovers have made a habit of chronicling their coming of age story through song.
The Utah-based band, featuring Joshua Harmon (lead vocals and guitar), Jonas Swanson (lead guitar and vocals), KJ Ward (bass) and Juice Welch (drums), wrote their 2019 breakout hit, “Kilby Girl”—about a college-aged girl with a “fake ID and a nose ring”—while still in high school. In retrospect, the material feels fitting for a group of teens.
Now in their early 20s, and in a highly visible season of their lives, The Backseat Lovers have encountered a new set of headwinds unique to adulthood—and fame. In “Snowbank Blues,” off the band’s October 2022 LP Waiting to Spill, Harmon sings, “There’s something on my chest/It’s really messing with my health/Just because I’m smiling doesn’t mean that I am/Smiling for myself/Take the stage and put the mask back on the shelf.”
“I’ve come to really appreciate how I’m not alone in this,” Welch tells the Weekly during a phone chat from northern Utah. “I can’t imagine being a solo artist. I’m really grateful that there’s four of us in this band that are going through the same stuff. We have our different lives, but that new element of this kind of lifestyle … it’s really special to me that we have each other to lean on.”
It took time to build that bond, Swanson admits on the same call. “I was always really shy growing up and not really sure of myself and how much I could share with the world,” he says. “But being in this band has definitely taught me that I don’t really need to be afraid of sharing what’s going on inside of me.”
That helps make The Backseat Lovers’ music so visceral. As co-writers, the four members regularly dive into one another’s psyches, collectively mining experiences, heartaches and fears. They’ve achieved that level of vulnerability in part by taking private writing retreats together. Waiting to Spill, Welch says, benefited from those sessions.
“There’s something special about being out in nature and with the other guys and our instruments and kind of leaving that space just for music,” Welch says. “It’s one of my favorite things to do, giving all of our time and energy and life to let the music breathe and just see what happens. Some really cool stuff has happened with those trips.”
Whereas the band’s first album, 2019’s When We Were Friends, announced itself from the Utah mountaintops, Waiting to Spill whispers with gauzy fuzz and cabin-shaking acoustics. And though Harmon’s resounding vocals drive the heart of the melodies, Swanson and Welch’s instrumental contributions pump it full of richness.
“I love the kind of guitar playing that feels almost like singing,” Swanson says, naming Explosions in the Sky as an influence. Welch mentions the work of late Rush drummer Neil Peart.
“There’s a YouTube video of one of his drum solos that shouldn’t be able to be played by one person,” Welch laughs. “I remember watching it and being in complete awe that someone could actually play the drums like that.”
Anything and everything is an instrument to The Backseat Lovers, evidenced on Waiting to Spill opener “Silhouette,” during which a recorded passing car drifts by, and on album closer “Viciously Lonely,” where a downpour of rain leads the song out. It’s cinematic in all the right ways.
“We’ve always been really interested by the sounds in the natural world, and a lot of that stuff was taken from voice memos on our phone,” Swanson says. “I think we seek it out now. It’s like our ears are more attuned to hearing the potential in sounds.”
The Backseat Lovers are set to play a sold-out gig at Brooklyn Bowl on April 28, the group’s first Vegas performance since Life Is Beautiful 2021. Swanson and Welch tease that there might be new songs in the setlist. The band is still adjusting to its newfound fame, “but I think the best way for me to just enjoy everything is to buckle in,” Swanson says.
THE BACKSEAT LOVERS With Renata Zeiguer. April 28, 7 p.m., $36-$46. Brooklyn Bowl, ticketmaster.com.
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