by emma schoors
photo by lexi yob
Somewhere just outside of Michigan, The Backfires are processing a particularly bizarre fan interaction. “Someone last night, when we gave them our signature, said they were gonna use it to steal all our money,” lead guitarist Harry Ruprecht says. “He was like, ‘Because I’m gonna learn how to forge this and sign for a Porsche one day,” frontman Alex Gomez adds, voice tinged with a cocktail of imminent laughter and disbelief. “I was like, ‘Dude, I can’t afford a Porsche. Good luck!”
The threat of identity theft aside, fate has been kind to the band from both sides of the Atlantic. Gomez and bassist Matt Walter grew up near Washington, D.C, where the vocalist attended a life-altering Catfish and the Bottlemen show at 9:30 Club. That evening that acted as a catalyst to the group’s formation: “I was just completely blown away,” Gomez says. “I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.” Hellbent on carving their own niche in the indie rock landscape, Gomez made the trek to London on behalf of himself and Walter for his freshman year of college, where he met Ruprecht and drummer Max Wanduragala. “Matt and I literally talked about me going over there and meeting British kids to start our band with,” he says. “I met Max a couple weeks in, and through NYU we were able to join the student clubs at UCL, University College London, where Max and Harry were studying.”
After some mutual ogling at university-led Battles of the Bands, the foursome formed Qualia Noir — a “really terrible” name, as per the lead singer. That misstep was swiftly corrected when Qualia Noir became The Backfires, and the band’s debut EP, Consider The Backfires, was born. Walter’s introduction to Ruprecht during his first visit to England was decidedly rockstar: “You came outside your dorm in London and you were, like, actively drunk,” he recalls of the lead guitarist. “Was it nighttime?” Ruprecht asks. “It was definitely nighttime. You weren’t just day drinking,” the bassist assures, drawing a burst of laughter from the group.
Apart from onstage chemistry, the band reads as genuine friends. It checks out, considering they weathered a pandemic soon after forming. “The pandemic was a bit of band therapy,” Ruprecht says. “We hadn’t really started yet, you know?” Walter adds of their standing pre-2020. Since then, they’ve rattled off a handful of increasingly addictive singles, toured extensively with The Courteneers, The Criticals, Phoneboy, and more, and racked up impressive social media stats as a means of connecting with an even larger fanbase. The word “indie” gets thrown around a lot nowadays, but The Backfires have the actual label independence and years of grafting to back it up. They’re self-starting as hell — still responding to comments, meeting fans, and signing various items are an everyday feat, though it’s safe to say blank receipt paper is ixnayed from that list from now on.
It doesn’t take meeting The Backfires to see there’s a fire within them, nor does it take more than a single listen of “Blindsided” to see they’re one of New York’s most promising rock acts. Their work speaks eloquently of young love, revelry, and the community fostered by live music. In our recent interview, the four-piece fielded questions on everything from the band’s beginnings to the ins and outs of their upcoming debut album.
Where are you guys right now?
Alex: “We just passed Chicago, driving into Michigan. Actually, we might be in Indiana right now. We’re driving to…”
Grand Rapids, right?
Alex: “Grand Rapids, yeah! I’m glad that you know.”
How was St. Louis last night?
Alex: “It was good. Max had been to St. Louis before, but otherwise none of us had really been before. It was our first time in Missouri, maybe for all of us except for Max like two weeks ago in Springfield. Missouri’s a pretty slept on state.”
I don’t know anything about Missouri other than that Langston Hughes is from there. I’ll have to make a trip.
Matt: “I didn’t even know that.”
Alex: “And Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry’s from St. Louis, we learned that yesterday.”
Max: “The food is great.”
Alex: “Yeah, the food everywhere we went was fantastic.”
Have you had any dodgy experiences on tour so far, or has it been pretty smooth sailing?
Harry: “Someone last night, when we gave them our signature, said they were gonna use it to steal all our money.”
Alex: “Well no, they said that to me.”
Harry: “They said it to me as well!”
Alex: “Oh really? Obviously we’re a very small band still, but I’ve heard that Dave Grohl said that he doesn’t sign things that aren’t merchandise. We usually hand out our set list at the end of the show, or if people want guitar picks or want merch signed, we do that. But somebody came up with their mom and had blank receipt paper and was like, ‘Can you sign this?’ And so I did a note out to them and I was like, ‘Thank you so much for supporting us.’ Then I signed my name, Alex, and he was like, ‘Is this your legal government signature?’ I don’t even know if I really said any response. I was just sort of aghast [laughs]. He was like, ‘Because I’m gonna learn how to forge this and sign for a Porsche one day.’ I was like, ‘Dude, I can’t afford a Porsche. Good luck!”
Matt: “It’s gonna bounce.”
There’s so many ways to steal someone’s identity nowadays. He didn’t have to go through all those steps.
Matt: “No, yeah. It was already on the internet.”
You’re on tour with Phoneboy right now, but later this week you’ll be at Webster Hall for a sold out show with Quarters of Change. How did you guys originally get in touch with them?
Alex: “We knew who they were, but we had played a show with this band The Criticals last fall. They were a fun group of guys, and they had a show in New York in March that we weren’t playing, but we knew some of the other bands playing, so we went out to support them. That was when we met the Quarters guys, ‘cause Ben was there. We just got to chatting, and then I remember we got drinks a couple months later and hung out. Ben’s a class guy, though. He’s really nice. We saw them around, and then I guess the show was just getting put together and they were looking for New York bands to play with. Ben and his manager called me two minutes apart, and they were like, ‘Yo, you guys wanna do this?’ That was in September. We all talked, like, ‘Yeah, this sounds sick.’”
They’re from New York, as are you, though half the band is from the UK. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re all living together in New York now?
Alex: “Yeah, we live together. None of us are actually from New York, but we’re based there. We all live in Brooklyn together. Matt and I actually grew up outside of Washington, D.C. I went to NYU, and I had done a year in London. I met Harry and Max over there, and whenever the borders were sort of opening up, everyone moved to New York, and we’ve all lived there since.”
When did you first all get in a room together? Did that happen pretty early on?
Harry: “We recorded our first EP in May 2019...”
Matt: “Yeah, it was before that. When I met you, you came outside your dorm in London and you were, like, actively drunk.”
Harry: “I was drunk?”
Matt: “For sure.”
Alex: “That doesn’t sound like Harry.”
Harry: “Was it nighttime?”
Matt: “It was definitely nighttime. You weren’t just day drinking.”
Harry: “I was like, ‘Maybe I was just still drunk from the night before.”
Matt: “I remember being nervous because Alex had talked about you a lot, and I was like, ‘Oh, wait, nevermind. He’s just a normal guy.”
Harry: “I have vivid memories of getting the tube around London, but I can’t remember...”
Matt: “Well, that was my first time ever being in England, so I kind of wanted to do some touristy stuff. I have pictures. I’ll send you some photos.”
Alex: “Matt and I went to high school together, and we played in bands together in high school. I did my first year of college in London through a global studies program at NYU, and so basically you could have gone abroad your junior year traditionally, or there’s freshmen that went abroad. I wanted to go to London, and Matt and I literally talked about me going over there and meeting British kids to start our band with, ‘cause we just really liked a lot of the bands coming out of the UK. I met Max a couple weeks in, and through NYU we were able to join the student clubs at UCL, University College London, where Max and Harry were studying. There’s a live music society, and for freshmen you basically sign up and say what instruments you play, and they throw you into bands. They’d give you two songs and a three hour rehearsal to learn them, and then you’d do a little Battle of the Bands. Max was in my band, and I just remember thinking he was a sick drummer and I wanted to play with him. I actually didn’t see Harry play the Battle of the Bands, but I met him.”
Harry: “I played ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ I guess I saw you singing and thought, ‘Oh, he looks funny.’”
Alex: “We were all sort of chatting, and I was saying that I had some songs and stuff that I had already written and so we all got in a room, started playing some songs, and then Matt came over and worked on a couple songs.”
Harry: “Wrote more songs, and then we released the EP, and then we’ve just been writing more songs.”
Alex: “We’re working on our first record right now. We’re very excited about that.”
You mentioned that in a podcast last month! Are there any spoilers you can give as to the new record, or what the new year will bring for the band?
Matt: “We just announced a tour, too.”
Alex: “Yeah, we’re playing more shows with Phoneboy. It was originally gonna be a five-track EP, then a six-track EP, and now it’s gonna be a ten-track album.”
Harry: “We get back from tour on Thursday, have a day off on Friday, play Saturday, and then finish our record starting Monday and the rest of that week, and then I’m flying out of the country on Friday.”
Alex: “He’s going to see his family for the holidays.”
Harry: “But then we’re releasing an album!”
Alex: “Ten brand new songs. I mean, we’ve been playing a couple of them live, but none of them are released yet.”
Harry: “We might have played every single one of them live.”
Alex: “Iterations of them. Some of them have changed since we played them, right? There’s a song called ‘Dressed For A Funeral’ that I feel like has had four versions. It’s so different from the first time we played it live to what it’s gonna be on the record.”
Talk to me about lyricism. Who’s the main lyricist in the band? Is it just one of you, or more of a joint effort?
Alex: “I think for the most part, most of the lyrics in the new record are written by Harry and myself, but there has been collaboration on a lot of lyrics with Max and Matt for some of the songs on the record as well.”
Who are some of your inspirations lyrically? I feel like Van McCann is somewhere in that mix.
Alex: “Yeah, definitely. Catfish is a big band for us. That was one of the first bands that I saw live. I was just completely blown away. I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I saw them at 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. when they were touring The Ride. I didn’t even really know who they were. I had ‘Pacifier’ downloaded as one of those iTunes free singles, and I had a couple friends that were going and they were like, ‘Let’s go check out this band.’ I saw them, and at that time I had been writing some songs, but it was way more singer-songwriter kind of vibe. I saw Catfish, and I was like, ‘This is sick.’”
Your songs veer on that loud, live side, even in their recorded versions. Why do you gravitate towards the UK methodology of songwriting?
Harry: “Everyone in the band listens to a lot of UK bands. We’ve been influenced by UK bands the most, and it’s just materialized in a way where that’s just what it sounds like.”
Matt: “I think it is a lot about the live performance, though. That’s one of my favorite parts. So it’s like, how do you replicate that in the record, and then be able to play it live? We thought about that a lot for this new record. For a lot of the songs the music came together in a live room scenario, whereas that wasn’t necessarily the case for the EP or some of the singles, just because we were physically isolated.”
Alex: “There’s bands that just sound so good live, and another band that we sometimes reference is The Killers. I feel like The Killers just sound like a UK band. Matt and I both listened to a lot of the bands that were coming out of the UK. I know both of us grew up listening to The Beatles, and a lot of those classic British bands for whatever reason. I could do decade by decade and probably prefer the British bands to the US bands that were big at that time.”
Harry: “There’s a song on the new record that sounds a bit like that called ‘Matador,’ where it’s just a lot of different British influences. Max wrote all the lyrics.”
Alex: “I think it’s funny though, ‘cause obviously growing up in the US, I feel like there’s so many big 2000’s pop rock radio songs that I would just hear in the car, and I hear those melodies and things like that, and that takes me to that time. I think that influences the melody writing sometimes.”
Absolutely. The Killers are one of those bands you’d never guess is from Vegas of all places.
Matt: “For real. Were they signed by Rough Trade? Was that the story?”
Alex: “One of their first tours was in England, so I think it shaped their sound, which is similar to us. I think our songs sound like we’re an English band because they were produced and recorded in England for the most part. This record we’re working on is really the first project we’ve ever done in the US, working on it in New York with a producer who’s American. But he lived in England for many years, actually grew up there, and it’s getting mixed by an English engineer.”
You mentioned The Beatles, so I’m gonna need each of your favorite Beatles records.
Matt: “I’m an Abbey Road enjoyer. I think it’s, like, the best record of all time.”
Alex: “I also love Abbey Road, but I’ve been very much listening to Rubber Soul lately.”
Harry: “I really like Revolver.”
Max: “Mine is either Abbey Road or Sgt. Pepper’s.”
Alex: “What’s your favorite Beatles record?”
Probably The White Album. I feel like it’s the most varied. I could listen to it on loop until I die and be happy, you know?
Matt: “Last week we were getting interviewed and they said, ‘What album would you listen to if you could only listen to one for the rest of your life?’ and I said The White Album for that exact same reason. You’ll still lose your mind, but at least it’ll be more enjoyable than the average record.”
I wouldn’t enjoy listening to “Revolution 9” on repeat for the rest of my life, but there’s so many moments where I would be happy.
Alex: “It’s funny you say that. We were just in St. Louis and I had put on The White album as we were driving in, and ‘Revolution 9’ was playing just as we pulled up to the Airbnb, which was kind of sketchy looking on the outside. It kind of looked a little run down. So we just have this very trippy song playing while we’re trying to get inside. We were like, ‘What have we done?”
When it came to recording the first EP, that must’ve been right before COVID hit. How did you fair during that stretch, not being able to be together?
Alex: “There’s pros and cons. We had a different band name at the time which was really terrible, and I feel like that whole process was really intense. There was a lot of uncertainty of how we were gonna be a band in two different countries and all this, when we could figure out time and resources to be together for a week or two at a time. We were all still in university, so it’s a difficult logistical problem.”
Harry: “By the time the pandemic had finished, there was a point where me and Max were able to go back. The pandemic was a bit of band therapy. It also kind of put the music industry on hold at a time where we could put it out, so it didn’t really have a negative influence.”
Matt: “It did, but we hadn’t really started yet, you know?”
Harry: “A lot of our progress has been made in the last two years. The new record is definitely a much better representation of us.”
Looking forward, let's say five years, what are some venues you’re itching to play/bands you’re wanting to tour with?
Harry: “9:30 Club is a dream, hopefully within five years.”
Alex: “We can do it in five years. That lines up. If we’re doing 1,500 cap rooms, that’d be fucking ideal.”
Harry: “I really wanna play, I don’t know if it’s still called this, but the Hammersmith Apollo in London, and also Glastonbury Festival. We’re trying to play everywhere.”
Alex: “There are a couple of young rock bands right now, but I feel like there’s such a big difference right now in the industry between the huge bands like Arctic Monkeys and The Killers, who’ve just been around for decades. There’s a couple of young bands obviously like Inhaler and The Backseat Lovers that have popped through. Quarters is one of them that’s young and starting to come up. I just really believe in our songs, and I think we can expand a lot.”
Who are some bands you’d recommend to fans looking for an atmosphere similar to yours?
Alex: “Inhaler and Backseat get talked about. I feel like The Backseat Lovers are an incredible live band.”
Harry: “To be honest, we’re the best in the game.”
All: [laughs]
Matt: “Humble, humble.”
Alex: “We played with a band called The Mysterines last spring, and I think they’re recording their second record right now. They just opened for Arctic Monkeys, but they still haven’t done a ton of shows in the US yet. I think they’re a very, very cool band. They have more of an alternative sound. It’s a little bit darker, and Lia’s a phenomenal lyricist. Some other bands, like benches from the west coast, they seem pretty cool. They’ve got kind of a Strokes-y sound. I haven’t seen them live, but I’ve heard them on Spotify. They sound really good. As far as bands that we like, Secondhand Sound. They’re awesome.”
They’re amazing.
Alex: “We had the privilege of playing a few shows with them this year. Last summer they played in New York, and one of Matt and I’s friends from high school was playing guitar for them at the time, and I saw some videos on Matt’s story and I was like, ‘These guys are sick.’ I listened to their EP and I remember listening to that all last summer, and then we had a show at Baby’s All Right in February this past year in New York, and Secondhand Sound reached out a few weeks before and was like, ‘Hey, we’d love to do this show with you.’ We were already a big fan of them, so that was super exciting. Then we invited them to play our west coast shows. They’re really cool. They’re from Nashville. Them and The Criticals are a couple cool bands from Nashville, but Secondhand Sound, those guys are sick. They’ve got really cool sounds.”
Harry: “Alex mentioned The Criticals, they’re lovely. They’re recording their first record in England right now, that’ll probably come out next year.”
Yeah, you’re mentioning so many bands I like. benches, Secondhand Sound, The Criticals, everyone. As a final question, which song from your discography do you wish got more attention?
Matt: “I always say that ‘Reflections On My TV’ is the most underrated Backfires song, so I think that’s just the definition of the question you’re asking.”
Alex: “A song I’m very excited about for the record is what I think will be the title track. That’s one to look out for.”
Matt: “It’s a sleeper, for sure.”
Alex: “I think there’s a lot of really big songs on the record that we’re really excited about, but that’s a song that we were playing live this summer for the first time and it’s a lot of fun. We’ve been cycling through some of the tracks on the record between different runs we’ve been doing. That’s a song I’m very excited for as far as our growth and development.”
Harry: “A song people are sleeping on probably deserves to be slept on, and we need to write better songs.”
Max: “There’s a song on the new record called ‘Replace It All,’ and I think that’s gonna turn out really well.”