The Backseat Lovers

One Liner: Utah boys making loose rock jangles

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but I'd call this rock and alternative rock.
Home: Utah

Poster Position: 16
Weekend One Only.

Friday at 1:45 on the T-Mobile Stage.

Thoughts:  Digging it.  Finally, a little rock and roll in the poster.

Their bio on their management website gives this background story: "The band started when Josh [Harmon], having heard of local drummer Juice Welch, introduced himself and asked if he wanted to start a band. They immediately started working on arrangements for some of Josh's songs. Later Josh met lead guitarist and vocalist Jonas Swanson while waiting in line for an open mic at the Velour in Provo city. Neither of them got on the list to play that night, so they sat on a park bench outside the venue and played their songs to each other until they ran out of stuff to play. Josh invited Jonas to come down and play with him and Juice. It was that night that Out of Tune, a song Josh had been holding onto since he was 16, came to life when they arranged it as a group."  That tune has a couple different versions on Spotify, but sounds like a good early example of who they were.

The dudes look like they are 16 years old.  Their sound is kind of a Kings of Leon/Strokes sort of thing.  And there is someone else that their lead singer reminds me of, but its not coming to me right now.  Someone I like, who has that same rough-edged voice at times.  He's almost got a Brit sound to him - kind of like the singer from Travis.  A little bit of that dude who was supposed to come to ACL last time but then bailed and I was very sad, uh, the "Hypersonic Missles" guy, uh, Sam Fender!  Thanks Google!  NO!  It just hit my brain like a lightning bolt - this guy reminds me of Benjamin Booker!  Another dude I discovered through ACL Fest.  Super good.

One album - 2019's When We Were Friends.  Pretty solid - I think their guitarist is legit.  One song off of that album has exploded - no other tune has more than 10 million streams, but then "Kilby Girl" is out there with 45.6 million streams.  Looks like it is on a playlist called Alt NOW (along with other ACL bands like Black Pumas, Machine Gun Kelly, nothing,nowhere, Modest Mouse, Billie Eilish, Bleachers, and KennyHoopla - maybe I need to just look at this playlist next year when I am looking for predictions of who is coming to the Fest in 2022?).

Yeah buddy.  Jangle those jangly guitars right up into my jangle spot.  "Intuition" is a good track too, with a cool tempo change.  "Heavy" is a good one too.  I'll give you one more, their second-most streamed at 9.3 million.  "Maple Syrup" (although this is an acoustic version, on a sailboat, with a pretty sunset going on in the background.

It's hard to see his mouth, but it feels like the music doesn't match the video, which would seem impossible to do.  Either way, a nice version of the tune.

I'd absolutely go see this show.  Hell, if they played an aftershow one night, I'd be up for going to see them in a smaller venue.