NILS BECH - Foolish Heart

Nils Bech has repeatedly tried to break down the barrier between musical creation and performance, doing so by recounting his own emotions without fear of offending the sensibilities of those who reject the concept of normality tied to homosexuality, or by bringing dance and melodrama to the stage with bittersweet, refined tones, perhaps ill-suited to an audience fogged by alcohol and waiting for yet another rockstar to appear on stage.

Nils isn't an innovator, but an artist for whom what matters is authenticity and inventiveness, namely the will to lay bare the power of art by playing between experimentation and singer-songwriter pop. A sincere and courageous artist in exposing a same-sex relationship in the pages of "One Year" or the difficulties of living together in "Echo", all of this set against neoclassical-leaning harmonies made appealing through injections of electronics, art-pop, video art and performances, the latter rich with references to the world of classical music, opera and ballet, the artistic fields in which Nils took his first steps.

A stranger to the dynamics of the music business, Bech keeps telling his own story without reservations and without rules, going so far as to upend that process of normalization which with "Echo" seemed to have found a definitive turning point.

What has happened recently is essential to understanding the nocturnal, melancholic and less electro-pop atmospheres of "Foolish Heart": the breakup of a relationship that lasted eight years, an event that pushed his thoughts toward doubt, insecurity and regret. Like the character in Howard Phillips Lovecraft's story, "The Outsider", Bech felt an urgent need to confront reality, abandoning the few certainties fueled by passion, but unlike the book's protagonist, he wasn't horrified by himself, but by the indifference surrounding those who sink into suffering and loneliness. More alien than outsider, Nils ultimately found in the bare essentials of a few piano notes and in the candor of romanticism the cure for a pain that seems to have no answer.

The narrative takes shape by digging up a track from "One Year". It's no coincidence that the track in question is "That Girl", a song whose protagonist is his ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, a cycle that either closes or repeats itself with very different tones: in place of the powerful electronics comes a piano touch reminiscent of the indolence of early Anthony Hegarty. A choice that lets the voice embrace deeper tones, heightening its most theatrical attitudes, which in the following "Does She Love" explode in all their beauty and force, with a harrowing dialogue between violin and piano.

The elegant video accompanying the title track is an excellent distillation of Nils's lyrical power: filmed live at the Vigeland Museum in Oslo by award-winning director Kenneth Karlstad, it features Silas Henriksen, principal dancer of the Norwegian National Ballet, reinforcing that relationship with art that Bech himself has expressed in performances at the Venice Biennale or at the court of Norwegian royalty.

"Why" closes the first part of the album, a last desperate attempt to find an answer, as well as the first track where electronics return to the forefront with less invasive tones. Synths and drum machines flow with the same grace once explored by Blue Nile ("Tell Me"), even if at times with a marginal expressive intensity ("October", "Trap") that doesn't fully do justice to the author's potential. While the closing "Thank You" restores the intimate atmospheres sketched out by piano and voice alone, what emerges is a frustrating dichotomy between depth and lightness, one that keeps a figure like Bech at a distance from both the noble frontiers of art-pop and the electronic pop that has drawn a common thread across today's European scene.

It must be acknowledged, then, that for the Norwegian musician music is just one facet of his artistic expression, and that it's unlikely all this energy will ever converge into a single studio masterpiece — but getting invested in one or more of Nils Bech's works has its reasons, and "Foolish Heart" is without doubt one of them.

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07/08/2020