Interview with Spielbergs: ‘Mads is very good at letting us try stuff, it gives us ownership of the music’

Fresh from their release of their punchy single ‘Go’ last year, Norwegian punk band Spielbergs are hard at work on their second album.

The band comprises Christian Løvhaug (drums), Mads Baklien (vocals) and Stian Brennskag (bass). Baklien and Brennskag are childhood friends. Baklien and Løvhaug met when they were working in the same kindergarten in Oslo a few years ago: ‘A lot of musicians do this in Oslo,’ Løvhaug laughed. ‘It’s a good job to do if you want to have time to play at night, although it’s hard to get up when you didn’t go to bed until 3 a.m.!’

Løvhaug and Baklien put music on the back burner for a while after getting tired of touring Europe and sleeping on floors – and when Baklien had children – but when the creative itch hit them again in 2017, they started jamming together on Fridays. ‘I saw Stian at a Rockefeller farewell show in Oslo. I was drunk, he was drunk but I invited him to play with us the next week and, amazingly, we both remembered,’ Løvhaug laughed.

Their name is a reference to the fact that they are all massive fans of film director, Steven Spielberg. ‘We’re kids of the 80’s, we’ve watched all of his films,’ Løvhaug said. ‘In Norway, there used to be a film every Sunday night on one of the cable tv channels and it was often a Spielberg film. We’ve grown up with his movies. Our song ‘Ghost Boy’ was originally called ‘The Spielberg Song’ because it’s inspired by his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When we were struggling to think of a name, our co-producer Tord Øverland-Knutsen (from Liverpudlian band, The Wombats) ) said, “Look, you already have the song, you love his films, that should be your name.”’ Løvhaug says their favourite Spielberg film is Hook, based on Peter Pan. ‘It’s like the Peter Pan syndrome, we don’t want to grow up!’

‘It’s about pulling yourself together and moving on’

Last year, they released their single ‘Go’ as part of the Adult Swim Music Series, which promotes new music and which is an offshoot of the American cable network, Cartoon Network. ‘When we recorded ‘Go’, before the world stopped, we also recorded five other songs. Tomorrow (13 Jan), will be our first rehearsal since September because of lockdown and because Mads has been ill (not COVID-related). It was written but unfinished at the beginning of the COVID situation. Mads wrote the words, he writes most of our songs. It’s about pulling yourself together and moving on.’

As Baklien describes it: ”Go’ is about finding yourself in a never-ending circle of being caught in your past while trying to go forward and becoming a better person. Every time you feel like you’re going somewhere and things start looking up for you, you meet the brick wall and crash headfirst into it and fall back into the same old destructive patterns. And then you start over again.’

Spielbergs are now mulling how to release the five remaining songs, according to Løvhaug. ‘We might release the next album this year but more likely in 2022,’ he mused. ‘Of the new songs, ‘Go’ is my favourite because the mix turned out great and I really love the ending. The unreleased songs will have guitar solos, energy, loud drums – and lots of hooks! One of the upcoming songs has the working title ‘The New Year’s Resolution’, which Løvhaug says is a nightmare to play on drums ‘because it’s so fast’. ”The New Year’s Resolution’ is the story about the start of my 2020 where I finally managed to change my habits for a little while,’ Baklien explained. ‘But then when everything happened with the Covid and all, I ruined everything and basically wasted the opportunity I had given myself. Looking back now to when I wrote the song, it kind of looks like I took advantage of the situation and allowed myself to be weak and shitty.’

Typically, Baklien brings a riff or an idea for a song to the rehearsal room and then they jam it out. ‘It’s important that everyone feels they’re contributing something. Everyone should feel that the song belongs to them. Mads is very good at letting us try stuff, it gives us ownership of the music,’ Løvhaug said.

‘Our root are in the DIY and punk scene in Oslo, so it was never an option to sing in Norwegian’

Singing in English was a no-brainer, according to Løvhaug: ‘Our roots are in Oslo’s DIY and punk scene. And not many of the bands at that time sang in Norwegian and most of the bands looked to the American underground/DIY scene. That has stuck with us in a way, so it was never an option to sing in Norwegian. The lyrics are telling a story about something in Mads’ life or something close to him, universal themes like love and heartbreak, those usual things. And everyone knows about growing up. Our song ‘4 A.M.’ (on their 2019 album, This Is Not The End) talks about Mad’s childhood and going to the beach, when you’ve got no problems in your life. If you write simple stories in English about universal topics, Norwegian bands can pull it off!’

Løvhaug describes his band as ‘old school guys compared to the younger ones coming out’. He is a huge fan of Norwegian psychedelic rock band, Motorpsycho, who have been around since the late 80’s: ‘The stuff they’ve done, they’ve broken boundaries, both creatively and making an audience outside of Norway, which historically most Norwegian bands don’t do, other than A-ha! They came from the underground, they’re a huge inspiration. Their album from last year (The All Is One) surprised me, in a good way, it was less heavy than some of their recent stuff.’

He has a lot of respect for fast-rising Norwegian pop singers Sigrid, AURORA and girl in red, of whom he says: ‘She’s got stories, she’s got attitude, she’s a huge talent.’ He’s also a fan of Brenn. ‘They sing in Norwegian, they stole the Norwegian Grammy from us last year!,’ he joked. If he could tour with anyone, he goes for Texan alt rock band, And You Will Know Us by The Trail of Dead: ‘We tried to get on the bill to support their European tour before COVID but we didn’t get the job. We’d feel like little kids to open for them! In February last year, I saw them play in Oslo for maybe 200 people. I felt they deserved a huge crowd, they’ve played much bigger gigs, but it was a Monday. It was a brilliant show, they’re living legends in the alt rock scene so that would be a complete honour.’

Of all the gigs they’ve played, Løvhaug’s favourite was a festival in Italy: ‘We played a festival in July 2019 called Rock The Baita about an hour outside Parma. Not many people spoke English but there were brilliant bands and pizza. They’d built a stage up in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, and we wondered if anyone would come! But they set up a barbecue and when we went on at midnight there were around 700 people. We didn’t even have a proper lighting system, just the lightning from the storm! All day, they’d been expecting bad weather and said the show might be cancelled. It started to rain as we finished our last song and just after that, we had really crazy rain!’