Interview with The Backfires: ‘I saw Catfish and the Bottlemen at the 9:30 Club in DC when I was 16…it was the first concert I went to that made me realise that rock could be like this’

Rock band from both sides of the Atlantic, The Backfires, brought out their debut EP, Consider The Backfires, last month, offering five tracks of energetic indie rock that are reminiscent of The Strokes, with a pinch of Arctic Monkeys thrown in.

The band comprises Alex Gomez (frontman and guitarist), Harry Ruprecht (guitar) and Matt Walter (bass). Gomez lives in New York, Ruprecht is in Sheffield in the UK and Walter is in Charleston in the US. Walter and Gomez grew up together in Washington DC and Gomez met Ruprecht when he was studying at UCL in London in 2018, which is when the band was formed. Initially, they called themselves Qualia Noir which Gomez joked that ‘people couldn’t spell or pronounce’ before rebranding as The Backfires, which is a reference to the old name backfiring.

When they started to make the EP, they didn’t have a very defined idea of how they wanted it to sound, other than that they wanted ‘a high energy rock sound’, which they tweaked to make it sound less raw, Gomez said. Every track on the EP was written remotely: ‘Harry and I were in the same place in 2018 and 2019 but after that, a lot of the songs were written over FaceTime, or maybe you’d send someone a voice memo,’ Gomez said. The EP itself was recorded in London in January 2020 and then mixed during the pandemic.

‘It’s kind of about going out and dating as a coping mechanism to feel comfortable’

The opening track, ‘The Man’, is one of the punchiest on the EP and a serious earworm, with a hooky, crunchy bass line. It was written by Gomez and is about his experiences studying in London as an 18/19 year old: ‘There was a lot of loneliness,’ he said. ‘I’d just met Harry but I had no home ground. It’s kind of about going out and dating as a coping mechanism to feel comfortable but that’s not sustainable.’

As the song goes: ‘I’ll take two for five and forget the past week or so, guess we’re getting lost tonight with somе girl caked in gold.’ When I ask them what the story is behind the girl caked in gold, Alex says: ‘It’s actually a reference to how girls in the UK would do their makeup for a night out!’

In that sense, I tell him, ‘The Man’ shares a lot of parallels with another track on the album, ‘Going Gets Easy’: ‘It’s exactly that,’ Gomez said. ‘The idea that going out can take your mind off things. Since then, it’s taken on a different meaning for me. The lyrics make me think of the pandemic and the sentiment that our lives are so different now. You can’t remember going out!’

‘It’s also about the contrast between the fun over there and then being stuck at home here’

For me, the catchiest and most energetic song on the EP is ‘Preoccupied’, which was written by Ruprecht and which is underscored by scorching riffs and licks: ‘It was written after I’d been to America to play some gigs, I was preoccupied about a girl there and about the band,’ he said. ‘It’s also about the contrast between the fun over there and then being stuck at home here.’

As the pre-chorus kicks off: ‘If I stumble home and lie with you, hallucinate you on the night tube, can I stumble home, a phone call will do? I’ve not been the same since I saw you.’

They’ve been writing ‘tons of new material’ during the pandemic, according to Gomez, with plans to record another 3-4 tracks, with a view to releasing another single before July. They don’t want to give any details about the upcoming single, although Gomez describes it as ‘high energy and lyrically more grown up’: ‘All of the songs on the EP were written before the pandemic but we’ve written a lot since then and our songwriting has developed.’

‘Alex Turner is incredible. Lyrically, our next songs have been very influenced by him’

Arctic Monkeys have been a massive inspiration to all of them. ‘Alex Turner is incredible. Lyrically, our next songs have been very influenced by him,’ Gomez said. ‘Also, for me, I saw Catfish and the Bottlemen at the 9:30 Club in DC when I was 16. I was, wow. It was the first concert I went to that made me realise that rock could be like this. It inspired me to write rock songs.’ Walter also cites Catfish and the Bottlemen as inspirational, as well as The Beatles: ‘I remember being a kid in first and second grade and every day I’d have a 20 minute walk to school and I would listen to Abbey Road and The White Album. Paul McCartney and John Lennon are such heroes of mine.’ He also gives a shout out to some friends of his in the band Inn Vinegar, whose recording session he sat in on last week: ‘They’re all jazz students,’ he explained. ‘It’s not necessarily rock, maybe more psychedelic rock.’

Gomez is a big fan of Phoneboy, who he describes as ‘bedroom pop’: ‘New York is more on the pop scene,’ he said. Ruprecht, on the other hand, has found inspiration in different places: ‘Metallica were a huge influence, their ethos and working hard, ploughing on to become the biggest rock band in the world.’

However, Gomez’s parents weren’t particularly into music: ‘For me, my parents weren’t really musical listeners. My dad would listen to the news in the car, so the only music I really heard was on the radio. It’s only the last few years that I’ve been expanding – there are some 2000 pop rock influences!’

If they could tour with anyone, both Walter and Ruprecht pick Arctic Monkeys. Gomez is mulling who to pick: ‘I’ll say Inhaler (an Irish rock band), they’re sort of our age but famous, it would be cool to play to a big audience and hang out with them.’

(Photo from left to right: Max, Alex and Harry)