Vilde Tuv has been hailed as “Norway’s finest one-woman orchestra” and she makes a bold stake for a wider audience with her third album; the first in which she has sung in English.
It is the follow-up to the instrumental album. Melting Songs (2021) which featured baroque pop tunes used in the soundtrack to The Ugly Stepsister, a body horror retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale.
Truthbomb is full of lively and varied arrangements which tap into a restless, nervous spirit. The deceptively delicate singing voice hints at darker imaginings
The single Start/Stop is full of fascinating breath-like pulses and jerky rhythms but is let down by fairly banal lyrics about needing to go with the waves of my heart.” The words lack the poetry or surrealism which would have made this track more arresting.
In a way this sums up a collection as whole. It’s an album which feels like a work in progress bookended as it is by two tracks in wholly different styles. The attention grabbing fuzz-punk dynamics of the opener -How I’m here - is in stark contrast to the dreamy new age of the final track Life Experience (which features Niilas and Mira Thiruchelvam). This kind of eclecticism is usually to be admired but here it feels a little too contrived.
Reservations aside, there is plenty of accessible pop energy burning brightly and enough interesting strangeness to make this a record worth seeking out.
