Spielbergs
Vestli
BIG SCARY MONSTERS
There’s a track in the middle of this second Spielbergs album on which the Norwegian trio deviate drastically from their usual fare. Instead of joyously brash, life-affirming but melancholy noisy rock—think Japandroids but even more wistful—“Goodbye” is a tender, piano-led and string-laden instrumental that tiptoes through centuries of broken hearts with poignant, delicate grace. It bears a passing similarity to the instrumentation of The Smiths’ “Asleep,” and draws you deeply into its gentle, hypnagogic world where everything feels safe and secure like a perfect childhood. On either side of that, though, things are very different: the succeeding “Me and My Friends” is a starburst of hopeful guitars, while the preceding “There Is No Way Out” is a careening, frantic rush of guitars and desperate vocals, a constant heart attack that, instead of killing you, makes you feel more alive.
That was very much the modus operandi of the band’s 2019 debut full-length, This Is Not The End. Its 12 songs were a tribute to the spirit of youth—its carefree abandon, its flights of fancy, its promise of future. That it captured such a specific sense of age and angst was remarkable considering frontman Mads Baklien was then in his mid-thirties, as were the band’s other members. It was also such a unique and fresh burst of feel, of wistful carpe diem, that to replicate it would be an incredibly tall order. And yet, the band have done just that with Vestli—the name of the Oslo suburb Baklien and bassist Stian Brennskag hail from. That one calm reprieve aside, the album shimmers with an infectious and inexorable vitality, whether that’s the dark-hearted, fuzz frenzy of opener “The New Year’s Resolution,” the rambunctious melodics of “Every Living Creature,” or the happy-sad nostalgia and rumination on lost youth of “Brother of Mine.”
Interestingly, Baklien has said it’s a record about being stuck, about there being no way out—whether that’s metaphorically, literally, geographically, existentially. “You can leave Vestli, but Vestli never leaves you,” the singer proclaims in the press release. This album—as a whole, but especially the wildly erratic nature of closer “You Can Be Yourself with Me”—simultaneously proves him both right and wrong. There’s a wonderful sense of freedom that permeates it from start to finish and which shakes off the shackles of those trappings while at the same time embracing them. That tender interlude of “Goodbye” is the middle ground between the two, the sound of the past and future colliding at the end of life. Because after all, wherever and whenever you go, there you are—even when you’re not.
