Spielbergs

Three veterans of Norway's indie circuit formed Spielbergs in Oslo during 2016 as an occasional diversion that rapidly expanded into worldwide notice. Delivering punk-rooted rock balanced between drive and tunefulness, the group echoed the approach of Japandroids, Titus Andronicus, and No Age. Their opening release, the 2018 EP Distant Star, drew swift notice for its guitar-heavy force supporting melodic structures filled with pop hooks and communal choruses. That early response prompted a full-length debut, This Is Not the End, in 2019, while the 2022 follow-up Vestli introduced greater studio polish without weakening the band's core strengths.

Guitarist Mads Baklien, bassist Stian Brennskag, and drummer Christian Løvhaug make up the trio. Each participant arrived with earlier band experience: Løvhaug had recorded alongside Dogpile and Team Me, and Brennskag had issued an album with Label. After stepping back from music as a profession, Baklien and Løvhaug resumed studies yet still craved casual playing. Their meeting with Brennskag produced an immediate creative fit, resulting in weekly home sessions that revived their shared enthusiasm. Those rehearsals led them to the studio with Tord Øverland-Knudsen of the Wombats handling production and engineering. A track provisionally titled "The Spielberg Song," written after viewing Close Encounters of the Third Kind, inspired Øverland-Knudsen to propose Spielbergs as the permanent name, which the members accepted.

Distant Star reached listeners in April 2018 and quickly collected strong notices from critics and online outlets. The British indie label By the Time It Gets Dark adopted the EP, prompting endorsements from NME, Stereogum, and Kerrang!. The band returned to Øverland-Knudsen for their first album, This Is Not the End, issued in early 2019; the record drew additional acclaim and secured a Spellemannprisen nomination, Norway's counterpart to the Grammy. Later that year the group released the EP Running All the Way Home, and just before the March 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns they tracked the single "Go!," which appeared that May.

A new agreement with the British label Big Scary Monsters supported the second album, Vestli. Titled after the suburban Oslo area where Baklien and Brennskag grew up, the set stands as their most refined recording to date, adding strings and keyboards to several tracks while preserving the urgency of earlier work.