‘This Is Not An Exit’: The Debut Entrance of The Backfires

By Allegra Cuomo

Last October, we sat down and spoke to British-American indie rock band, The Backfires, who are on the cusp of releasing their debut album ‘This Is Not An Exit’ in January 2025 (out now). The band, who met at UCL (lead singer, Alex Gomes, even had his own show on RARE FM!), discussed the process of producing and releasing their long-awaited debut album, previous musical inspirations and their favourite touring memories.  

Interviewer: 

RARE: Allegra Cuomo 

The Backfires: 

Lead singer: Alex Gomes 

Guitar: Harry Ruprecht 

Bass: Matt Walter 

Drums: Max Wanduragala 

RARE: I’m sure you get this question a lot, but how did you guys all meet? 

Harry: Very topical, we actually met at UCL. The three of us [Harry, Max and Alex] met at  UCL at the Live Music Society. We did a Battle of the Bands competition, where you got  put into random bands. 

Max: Did you win? 

Alex: No, no one won. None of us got the 100 quid bar tab. 

Harry: I remember I got a bar tab for something. Alex and Max met in their band, I saw  them and went up to them afterwards and chatted to them. Then Alex and Matt knew each  other from high school in America. So Alex organised a rehearsal with the three of us and  invited Matt over to do some recordings in 2019. That’s when we recorded our first EP. After Covid ended, Max and I moved to New York.

RARE: And that’s how the four of you are now based in New York. When forming the band, what were your initial musical inspirations? Have your musical inspirations changed since then? 

Alex: I think so, definitely. I feel like when we were starting out, when Matt and I went to  Lollapalooza in Chicago right after we graduated high school in 2018, and I sort of knew I  was going to London, there was definitely a desire to go and meet people that had grown up with British music. Just because we really liked a lot of the British bands and Irish bands. And so I feel like that was definitely very central to it all, and I think that for so many [of the artists] that we saw then, such as Arctic Monkeys and Catfish [and the  Bottlemen] and more, were definitely reasons for why we sort of got into it, or at least definitely reasons why I wanted to [make music]. 

But then I think that once you start [making music], I find that you want to listen to more and more and more music. And I find, as we were sort of in the indie, indie-alternative genre, there’s a lot of bands that I think make great songs, and I find myself listening less to what is happening now and more what was going on 30, 40 years ago. Simply because I think you need to continue pushing your ear in a way, and I feel like I was just getting bored of listening to some of the same playlists. And I was like,  ‘Oh wow, this is kind of what we are doing.’ So then if you make every musical experience that you have this one thing, it just gets a bit stale. 

RARE: And focusing on the rapidly changing indie rock space? 

Alex: There’s a lot of stuff, especially I’m thinking mostly the guy bands right now - the male fronted bands. However, I feel as though there is kind of more exciting stuff in the music space right now, and alternative indie, that’s coming from female fronted groups.  And I feel like it has been really exciting to see a lot of those emerge in the last five years or so. 

Matt: I think my music taste has changed just naturally by getting recommendations from  other people, just through the music that we make, and then meeting other people – Max is pointing at himself! Taking music from each other, going ‘Oh I like that song’ and then  making it your whole personality, kind of a tale as old as time. 

RARE: Talking about the musical process, obviously your debut album is coming out in  January. What has the process of recording it, finishing it, and getting ready to release it been like? 

Harry: Pretty long process. I think the oldest song for this is Matador, which we wrote in a  few weeks in January 2022. And then everything after that was sort of just writing as much  as we could. It wasn’t really with an album in mind. It was quite a long process where we  weren’t necessarily shooting for an album the whole time, and it was just writing songs to  play live, because I think the band was focused on playing live. 

And then we got to recording an EP in 2023, and then that progressed and it got to a certain point where it was  good and we really liked how it sounded and then our producer turned it into an album. Then we added a few more songs we’d written after that, and then it all came together quite quickly after that. There were a lot of hours in the rehearsal room, staring at each other, and  then a lot of hours in the studio. 

Alex: Yeah it's very exciting. It’s one of those things that just happened. Some of those songs are so old. I remembered we had done the EP and we had signed with management, and they were like “Rock bands make records”. And we were like “yeah, of course” but at the time we only had enough money to record an EP and we had done a big show in New York and that had paid for half of it. The idea of working on an album was like “yeah, but where is the money going to come from?“ And so we were very fortunate to have enough people to be interested in it now, where we are able to sort of make it possible, and that’s very exciting. 

RARE: Is there a particular story behind the track list, the order of songs, and the title of the record? 

Harry: Definitely the title. 

Alex: The first show we did over in New York was at this venue called Mercury Lounge. I  feel like when we had been a band before we were all in New York, it was very much a band in name, but not as much a band in reality, because we weren’t all playing together and we weren’t all rehearsing all the time. And so we all moved to New York – I was living there and everyone moved – and we were all together all the time. The first gig we played was at Mercury Lounge, and there is this sign, a standard ‘you can’t go through that door’ sign. But then after that, I would go to gigs there and that sign always struck out, and the phrase was just something that was interesting. And I think that it felt like we were starting to write songs for a project and there was definitely an idea to try to write a song with that being the centre [of] it. It felt like before that we were sort of a band that was based in London and then afterwards this became our project of us being really a band in New York. It felt like a really good way to stamp that off and be like ‘we’re here, we’re in New York’ – a  very centering title for it all. 

RARE: What are your favourite tracks from the album? Do you each have a favourite? 

Harry: I think mine is ‘This Is Not An Exit’. 

Matt: I like listening to ‘Turn Off The Lights’ the most. I think it’s the best chorus. 

RARE: What about touring? Do you guys have a favourite touring memory? 

THE BACKFIRES: Las Vegas! [they mutually agree] 

Matt: Yeah, none of us had ever been to Vegas before, and we stayed up until six in the  morning. 

Harry: We were actually at a Thanksgiving at Matt’s house and they had a family friend there.

Alex: We had met him at this Thanksgiving, and we were all hanging out in the backyard,  and he was like ‘So you guys are playing Vegas’ and we were like ‘yeah, we are playing  Vegas’ and he was like ‘oh that’s sick, I love Vegas, I might go there in a few weeks’ and  then 30 minutes later he shows me an Airbnb listing, and he was like ‘what do you think  of it?’ So I was like ‘I mean cool man, have a nice time in Vegas’, and he was like ‘Okay, I  booked it – for all of us to go together!’ because at that point we just did not have a place to stay yet in Vegas. I don’t know what the plan was – I hadn’t figured it out yet. I just decided  that we were here for Thanksgiving, let's just sort of go with the flow. And then he did that and we ended up staying with him in Vegas and had an exceptional night. 

RARE: Definitely a night to remember. Speaking of touring, how are you feeling for your  upcoming USA tour? 

Alex: We’ve never done a tour that big. It’s going to be insane, it’ll be incredible. Seven  weeks, it's crazy. Time before that was three and a half weeks, I think [that] was the longest tour we had done. 

Harry: But we are doing a bit of a loop around the country and then going back to New  York so that will break it up a little bit. 

Matt: Alex and I are from Washington DC, and we are playing DC in this venue, right next  to this other legendary venue, so that’s pretty exciting. 

RARE: Are there any songs that you particularly like performing live? 

Harry: The end of ‘Going Gets Easy’ is pretty sweet. 

Alex: I mean it's been really cool to see how ‘Blindsided’ has been a sort of thing for us, and especially on these tours, to see people gravitate towards that song. It’s been really crazy because we recorded that in 2021 before we’d all moved to New York. And I remember even after we had done it, and we were figuring it out for our set in the US, I remember there was a whole lot of ‘I don’t know if this sounds good’ and then it got to a point where people were starting to gravitate towards that song and that was very exciting. 

Harry: I just had a flashback to us playing it in Austin, and there were a bunch of frat bros  there, looking for a completely different experience. Safe to say they were surprised. 

‘This Is Not An Exit’ is out now. Released on January 24th 2025 

Tickets for their USA tour are on sale now! The Backfires hope to be returning to the UK soon.