The brutal authenticity of the Backseat Lovers is a reminder of my growing pains.
By Hogan Bingel
The Backseat Lovers listened to my soul when they composed “Waiting To Spill.”
The Utah-based group, The Backseat Lovers, released their sophomore album, “Waiting To Spill,” on Oct. 28. 2022 and began their tour on April 22. This second album does not have the same infectious pop hits as “When We Were Friends,” their debut album, dividing fans’ opinions on this new work.
The band takes listeners on a journey of angst, emotion and anticipation through growing up and reluctance to move on — often complicated by love. Each song will quite literally rip you apart but mend you back together.
In typical Backseat Lovers fashion, the melancholic nature of their lyrics contrasts the upbeat rhythm of their songs. The placement of the songs is strategic — it sets the album up like a story.
The album begins with "Silhouette," an acoustic track whose few lyrics hit the theme of escaping growing up. Lead singer Joshiua Harmon preaches, "Wait for the day / Stay / Stay for the pain. Run / Run while you can / While you are still a silhouette." A silhouette is, essentially, a person who’s not really there — perhaps someone who has yet to discover who they are.
The album concludes with "Viciously Lonely," a slow-paced song written from the porch of Harmon’s house overlooking Salt Lake Valley and the Wasatch mountain range. The song's metaphoric lyrics reveal what it's like to be stuck with your own company, as the singer agonizes over his worsening psychosis. The anticipation that builds over time spent alone is shown through the singer's reference to the album title. The transformation from the first to the last song reveals that pain and growing up are inescapable. No moment will come without difficulties, but adjustment will come with time. We are all plagued with growing pains.
I can feel the personal value the Backseat Lovers put in each song but especially in "Morning in the Aves." The song evokes the memory of driving in a car as a kid. You're merely trying to see the world, but there's too much to take in, and time is moving too fast to keep up with.
The singer complains about mundane things like traffic lights always being red and Christmas coming and going too fast to represent that time is a thief, but the discussion of growing up is still apparent: "Didn't grow up too fast / Wish it all could last." The singer clearly longs for the past and is haunted by life's inability to stay the same.
Afflicted by growing pains, Harmon acknowledges that he lived his childhood to its limits but that it does not make the inevitable end of his adolescence any easier. The song ends with similar themes of confrontation, with the singer wanting to have a difficult conversation with his old lover to make amends for his past but being held back by the fear of her response.
The sixth song on the album, "Snowbank Blues" is bottled-up nostalgia. A slower, melancholic song, the theme of longing is very present. In a story about the pain of living, the singer expresses that he feels stuck in a rut living every day the same. He longs for a change.
The song is a message to the singer's past love/long-distance partner whom he yearns for. The anguish he feels from being apart from her is powerful enough to make any listener shed a tear and has forced me to shed many. Unlike many artists, The Backseat Lovers’ songs typically don’t include a chorus. While the beat may follow the same flow, entire lines are never repeated, while certain words may be repeated multiple times to enforce a theme or reference.
In "Snowbank Blues," the band repeats, "Wish I could roll the windows down / But the snow has swallowed up our little town." Relative to the same theme of time moving rapidly, the car is a metaphor for time that forces us to move forward. The past has swallowed up the town where the singer and lover used to reside and forces the pair to confront the terms of their relationship, pressing for an end or a move outside its previous limitations.
The fourth song of the album, "Words I Used," feels like a conversation I've had with my long-distance boyfriend — or perhaps it's the conversation we've never been able to have. The lead singer’s reluctant statement is familiar: "Tell me on the phone / You know where my heart's gone."
To read someone without physically being in their presence is a power only reserved for those who know each other inside and out, but I never knew that once you let someone in, they always have a key. That’s not to say I wish he didn't know me so well — I just wish I could hide my cards better to keep from hurting him.
The singer continues with anguish, "Yesterday, I wrote a little tune / I'm afraid you'll hate the words I used / I'm sorry, but it's been weighing on me / Oh, I can't lie when I sing / No, I can't lie when I sing // My dear / There's nothing left in here /So just hold on /But don't hold on to me." Instead of songs, I bury the words I don't want to admit in my Notes app. I feel naive that I ever believed love could be so easy. My boyfriend’s response follows in the next verse, "And you fantasize of chasin lights / But you won't get far with half your heart at sea /And New York's callin' / For you darlin / So pack your bags, don't throw it all away / You know I'm fallin. From you darlin."
By his third visit, my boyfriend could tell I'd changed. Everyone always talks about distance making the heart grow fonder — no one mentions that distance also makes the heart grow distant.
All the cliches are right: New York made me age five years. My friend compares living in New York to the thrill of sex with her toxic ex-boyfriend — you hate it and you love it. It will wreck you, but you’re ultimately just happy to be there. I could have heeded those warnings, but unfortunately, I am one of those people that is irrevocably in love with New York in spite of everything else
When I came home for Thanksgiving, my mom told me I'd "gotten meaner." What she doesn't know is that this "meanness" is merely a layer of tough skin and a New York attitude I adapted in order to make it out alive. Just like the Backseat Lovers, guilt hangs on my shoulders, stemming from the feeling that I let the people I love down by becoming someone else.
I hate how his eyes looked when he told me, "I feel like I'm holding you back." Of course, he was. In the 2.5 years we’d been together, we have unintentionally traded a piece of ourselves.
Establishing a relationship during Covid meant we became each other's only rose in a field of thorns, spending every waking hour consumed by the overwhelming power of 'first love.' I learned to rely on him in a way I had never relied on anyone else. Having to separate for college was like having the ground to which we stood swept away. First love is completely transformative and foundational to future relationships. I had to relearn how to be alone "with half my heart at sea," as the Backseat Lovers say in “Words I used.”
The distance has forced me to reckon with who I am outside of him. The absence my family and friends have noticed in me is an effect of my affair with New York. I am a woman divided, stretched thin between an old Hogan and a new Hogan, yet to find a middle ground.
Harmon concludes with a message my boyfriend and I know all too well, "I'm afraid there's no more room to stay…to stay." We have run out of time on our clock. In order for it to carry on, it must grow with us in a new realm.
Again confronted by growing pains, "Follow The Sound" is about returning home andt the complications of returning to a "home" that has changed — a familiar experience after moving to college and coming home during break. So much of my time is spent in New York that my parents’ home does not give me the comfort it used to, yet I am not completely at home in New York.
My friends from home don't fully know me anymore, but my friends in New York don't know my past. Nothing feels like mine anymore. I am existing as a part of two worlds that I don't belong in, but I am alone in my own reality.
Harmon discusses the same discomfort and a hope to "get better." When returning to childhood homes, we are forced to confront the past. "Follow The Sound" is about making amends, which the band admits is a difficult thing to do. The lyrics follow the consciousness of someone debating, running away, or dealing with their situation.
Two of the final songs, "Slowing Down" and "Know Your Name," share similar lyrical themes. "Slowing Down" begins with the lead singer singing softly to the strumming of a guitar as a drum progressively gets louder. The climax of the song features Harmon singing passionately before the drummer’s solo. The pattern repeats, and the song’s slowed-down ending contains the lyrics, "People moving faster / Am I the only one that's slowing down?"
The Backseat Lovers and I seem to have the same anxiety over not being good enough. I fear that I never will become something better than I already am; I worry that every mistake I've made still follows me. We are fighting to grow from the past versions of ourselves while attempting to keep the integrity of who we think we are. This constant re-adjustment comes at the cost of constantly growing up. My present and past are constantly comparing each other, yet I acknowledge the beauty in change and believe in the ability to grow.
I look toward the future version of me in hopes she'll save us both. I am “Waiting To Spill.”
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