Sofia Talvik
Sofia Talvik may be from Sweden, but some decidedly American concerns inspired songs on her upcoming album Paws of a Bear, whose video for the track "Blood Moon" is premiering exclusively below.
Talvik wrote the song two years ago while in Idaho during a North American tour. "I really wanted to go to Yellowstone National Park -- I planned the whole tour around that," Talvik tells Billboard. "While I was up there, there were a lot of forest fires in Idaho and Montana, a lot of smoke in the air at the time. When the moon rose in the early evening it was really red, so I wrote ('Blood Moon') about that red moon."
For the video, which features multiple images of Talvik singing "Blood Moon" concurrently, Talvik tapped another American source. "I wanted to capture a Twin Peaks vibe, that mystic kind of feeling," she explains. "That red moon was almost spooky when you saw it. It kind of made me think about the Black Lodge and all that stuff that's part of (Twin Peaks). That's why the video is kind of suggestive; You don't know where to look, at which one of the persons you're going to look at. That was the whole idea."
Paws of a Bear is due out Sept. 27 and, appropriately, finds Talvik taking a more Americana-flavored approach -- influenced by Jason Isbell, Valerie June and others -- after the more fully produced and psychedelic tinged predecessor, 2017's When Winter Comes. "I had this idea when I started that it was going to be, like, super acoustic and stripped down -- only guitar and pedal steel," says Talvik, who produced the album working remotely with her band members. But she adds that, "I couldn't really stop myself, so I added more instruments. But it's still more stripped down than the last one. When you're recording it's a little bit like opening presents for Christmas or whatever; You have your song, but then you add all this stuff. It surprised you every time you add an instrument -- like, 'Oh, wouldn't it be awesome to add some horns to that song!' -- and it's hard to restrict yourself. So you have to learn to stop yourself at some point."
Talvik currently has European concert dates booked into the spring of 2020, though she plans to break into those for North American dates starting in February. Ironically, she adds, "the general theme of the album is home and what home is to me. Because I've been on the road so much, flying to different countries, driving around in my motor home, I felt like writing about home -- this place I'm not at very much."