We’ve had debuts a-plenty in NMC but not one that is so new that the band has hardly picked up any followers yet; less than a handful on Facebook, although a fair few more on Instagram.
I have a thing about band names. Those that are of the silly sort you tend to find quite a lot of in the UK and which are often food-oriented (The Lovely Eggs, Beans on Toast, Pigs x7 and so on) annoy me.
Where the Nordic scene is concerned I tend to eschew bands with names that say nothing, as bland as the Lorem Ipsum placeholder text and which seem to be have been selected because they are unlikely to offend anyone, in this most easily offended of eras.
The Danish band Kindsight was one of them. It doesn’t mean anything, does it?
And so when I saw the name Mildfire I very nearly hit the delete key. I mean, if you’re going to put ‘fire’ in your name, give it some clout, like Earth Wind & Fire, or Arcade Fire. It’s a Greek classical element for Pete’s sake, commonly associated with the qualities of energy, assertiveness, and passion. Mildfire? That’s a hairdryer.
Fortunately I didn’t because at the back of my mind was the realisation I had that Kindsight is actually a bloody good bad.
And so with Mildfire.
Their simple back story is that they are a new ‘composer collective’ based in Oslo and Berlin. The members are musicians with a long career in the Norwegian and international music scene. However they remain anonymous. A team of Orville Pecks or a Scandi version of WU LYF, the privacy obsessive Mancs who even kept deleting their own Wiki page.
They say “Debut single ‘Never Change’ depicts unconditional love; the shock of being forgiven and not abandoned.”
Coincidentally I’d just been watching a video about the unconditional love shown by a dog for its US war veteran master, slain in battle, so I was in exactly the right frame of mind for this.
Sonically, it’s an unusual journey and very catchy on account of a highly arpeggio-ated synth main melody line, supported by a mandolin, that acts like the chimes of a Caribbean ice cream van and draws you in. There’s a radio DJ in the UK waiting to discover this, I’m sure.
Lyrically they self-deprecatingly speak of their “naïve vocals.” Not so. I’m guessing they are all female, I hear no trace of male tones, including in the harmonic sections, which are just so.
The lyrics tell a story of a reversal of unrequited love with some smart wording:
“I will return all the favours/you know I’m in favour of failure/ as long you learn”.
For the second time in two successive nights that prompts me to compare an artist or band, this time Mildfire, with Emmy the Great, who knows a thing or two about misaligned love.
A very convincing debut.
‘Never Change’ is released on 2nd June. They promise that “This is the first taste of a larger launch.”
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mildfireofficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mildfireofficial/
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