Forrest Moody & Jake Bellissimo are a pair of Americans who reside in Berlin. Attentive readers of VSF will be familiar with Bellissimo already, as we’ve featured the songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and person in charge of Drunk With Love Records, several times. Connecting as two American musicians in Berlin, the duo began work on a collection of songs, which resulted in the EP Wertherlieder, the latest addition to the DWL catalog. As Bellissimo explains:
In the summer of 2017, Forrest and I bonded over worry. The result of supposedly teenage emotions regarding romance and progression, this worry inspired us to start embracing our impulse as opposed to burying it away as invalid. We began meeting every once in a while in front of a piano to catch up, talk about how things are going, and write songs, intending to write and record songs as they came, not allowing ourselves to edit the immediacy of our emotions.
Wertherlieder comprises of three originals and a take on a Charles Ives song, and promises to focus on the grand themes of “death, love, and the beauty that can happen in-between.” In preparation for the EP’s release, today we present a video for one of the tracks. ‘Selige Sehnsucht’ is a richly evocative piano-based song that sounds like it’s been beamed back from a bygone era. It’s minimal in terms of set-up, just piano and vocals, but there’s something maximal about it too, as if Moody and Bellissimo have poured every drop of syrupy feeling into it. Check out the video below:
Wertherlieder will be released on June 23rd. Head to the Drunk With Love Records website for more. Forrest Moody & Jake Bellissimo are playing two release shows, one in Berlin and one in Munich. Check the poster below for details!
Album artwork by Carinn Candelaria, header photo by John McDermott.