Wild Belle, a brother-sister duo comprising Natalie and Elliot Bergman, has gotten a lot of attention for creating protest music. Their new single "Throw Down Your Guns" caught the attention of NPR, who called it "powerful statement of peaceful protest."
Talking to GQ, Bergman confessed that the lyrics were actually not inspired by violence in the Bergmans' hometown of Chicago—they’re about her. “When I wrote that song it had to do more with my emotional turmoil and what was going on inside my head and in my heart,” she says, “I didn’t intend for it to be a political song.”
Wild Belle is about to release their second album, a follow-up to 2013’s Isles (so named because the Bergmans intended that every song on the reggae-soul-jazz inflected album should “resemble its own island”). Island vibes were more even more actively pursued with this new record, Dreamland. They set up shop in Jamaica to record a couple tracks and a video—a scheme that, according to Bergman, involved nearly being arrested by Jamaican policemen. “I talked my way out of it,” she reports. This is no surprise. Bergman—who caught up with GQ in her aunt’s home in Los Angeles—seems like she’s familiar with talking her way out of trouble.
What was it like to leave high school to drum with your brother?
I didn’t really tell my parents. I just went with my heart. It became a summer thing. Eventually I went to jazz school. When I moved to New York, I started collaborating on a record with my brother. That’s when we made Isles, our first record.
You’ve moved from Chicago to New York to Chicago to Los Angeles. Has your musical style changed since you crisscrossed around the country?
I think my musical style has definitely evolved. Dreamland is an evolution, sonically and emotionally. I was having this journey that happened in my brain and that became the sound of the record. Hopefully, I can take listeners with me on this journey that evolved inside of my head.
You recorded Dreamland in a bunch of locations—Jamaica, Nashville, L.A., Toronto, Chicago, New York. What place is the most musically inspiring?
I love Jamaica. It’s one of my favorite countries. I have a deeply spiritual connection with that land. It was an honor to be able to work there. I love the culture, I love the people. We shot this video there for "Our Love Will Survive." We went to this abandoned castle. We got about twenty of our friends from Jamaica to dance in the video. It looks beautiful. It looks raw and true to the country. Everybody can dance in Jamaica. Everybody can sing. It’s a world filled with talent. To be able to go there and work with the people of that country: It’s really an honor.
How did you find an abandoned castle?
There is lots of abandonment there. There are lots of vacant spaces that are overgrown. That's really the message of the song: If the world is ending and everything is overgrown and the earth is taking over and we are no longer, then our love will survive. I do believe love can and will outlast everything.
With everything going on in the universe—and I’m not even going to get political right now—I do believe at the end of the day that’s what can unify everyone: love.
Well, "Throw Down Your Guns" is classically political. [The video shows guns being melted into bells.]
My brother wanted to acknowledge the fact that gun violence is everywhere around us and it surrounds us especially in Chicago right now. We wanted to bring our community together. We’re not anti-gun, but we are anti-violence. I thought it would be a beautiful thing to interpret the song in a different way. All art is political. Hopefully, it comes across as a positive message rather than a negative one or a dark one, because we are just promoting love.
"Giving Up on You" is so fun and celebratory.
There are a lot of celebratory moments on the record, but I would like to touch on the fact that it was a very traumatic record to make. We were recording a lot of it in the dead of winter in Chicago and I just come out of this relationship and I was so low. I was in this very dark, fucked up universe of drugs and self-destruction.
At one point in the winter in Chicago, my electricity went out and I went to my neighbor, this kid Nigel Holt, he’s this awesome punk rock artist [he's a rapper] from Chicago. I went to Holt's house and said, I need to borrow your electricity. I got an extension cord from Home Depot, because I was too fucked up to even pay my electricity bill at the time. I was just wallowing in this darkness for months and months. I was going back home into this dark apartment with no apartment with no electricity and then to the studio. That was my life for many months.
Los Angeles has become my savior, even though it’s definitely a city filled with sin, it’s become this holy savior to me. It has uplifted me and brought me back to my own natural creative self.
__ Are you are going to stay in L.A. forever now? __
I don’t know. I love everywhere. I just needed to get the hell out of Chicago.