Some new categories have been mooted for NMR recently, including ‘Featured Artist’ and ‘Video of the Week’. This one, while featuring a (presently dormant) duo actually combines both of them because the video is very much part of the offer here.
I’m not sure quite what happened to Gothenburg’s indie / electro pop band Wildhart. I know they are still active in the sense that they responded to a remark of mine on Facebook recently, although I made the comment over a year ago. Also that they are a duo now – Kiwi Berg and Ylva Holmdahl - having lost one of their band members, Josefin the drummer.
I read that one of them (Berg, I think) is pursuing some academic studies while I also know that Holmdahl is in another (featured NMR) band, Holy Now.
Even so, it’s been a couple of years since they put anything out as Wildhart. What they did last put out is ‘New Beginning’ which completely bowled me over the first time I heard it and saw the video.
Essentially it’s a convoluted two-way, possibly three-way, lesbian love story, presented as a gentle ballad which builds and builds and then explodes at the end into what I assume is supposed to represent the maelstrom of their emotions as they enter a ‘new beginning’.
Directed by Julia Therin, the video is a little masterpiece, filmed partly on a railway bridge in wintry Stockholm and featuring a couple of local actresses/models/movers & shakers in Vilde Stampe and Sara Soltani Boljak, who I think is the daughter of Croatian immigrants to Sweden.
The acting from both of them is sufficiently good to convince me that they really are in love while Therin’s flair for lighting, atmosphere and mood is there for all to see. Everything is so tasteful. Even Vilde Stampe’s ‘vomiting.’
I can’t believe this video has still had less than 4,000 views, and many of them are mine.
I’d love to see this performed live and this review will be sent to Wildhart to probe gently what their future intentions are.
They're still on Facebook.