A Life Less Ordinary

There are rock stars and then there are people in bands who play rock music. SPIELBERGS are the latter, yet the Oslo trio have produced one of 2019’s brightest debut albums in THIS IS NOT THE END, mining universal truths from everyday ordinariness…

- Mischa Pearlman

Soon after Norway’s Spielbergs formed a couple of years back, vocalist and guitarist Mads Baklien got drunk and got lost in an internet black hole, trying to track down the world-renowned movie director after whom the trio are named. It was only in the fuzzy glow of the hangover that followed the next morning that the full absurdity of what he’d done struck him.

“I was really drunk,” he says, laughing about it now. “I thought I could just Google ‘Steven Spielberg contact’ and ask him if it was okay for us to use his name. The next day, I realised that was crazy.”

It’s an endearingly dorky insight into what kind of band Spielbergs are. Completed by bassist Stian Brennskag and drummer Christian Løvhaug, the trio might have made one of the most thrilling albums of the year in This Is Not The End – a record teeming with noisy, scuzzy rock’n’roll beauty – but they’re about as far removed from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood as it’s possible to be.

In fact, when Mads is not on tour or in the studio, the 36-year-old works in Oslo as a librarian. He’s also the father of two girls. Christian, who, like Stian, is a couple of years older than Mads, is the father of a boy. While it does provide Mads with a great dad-rock joke – “Hey, maybe this is what dads listen to these days!” he quips – it’s not that unusual for band members to have other jobs. Unlike most bands who start out in their teens or early 20s, however, the members of Spielbergs aren’t looking for an escape from the drudgery of their day jobs or from their real world responsibilities.