45th Parallel In the narrowness of winter mornings and early sunsets, Portland two-piece Wonderly spread a little joy in the form of a music video for a cover of Billie Eilish’s “Getting Older.”
A track from their acoustic covers album, fit till death, Wonderly’s adaptation and video for “Getting Older” feels like an ironic inversion of Eilish’s own humor — since she released the song about “aging well” at just 19 years old. Lyrics like “The things I once enjoyed/Just keep me employed now” are actually more meaningful, coming from the falsetto harmonies of veteran musicians Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk. Longtime collaborators far better known for writing topics new York Times’ daily podcast than their seven years of collaboration or decades of related musical projects.
With a new video released on Monday, Wonderly changes the meaning of the track once again, roller skating, skateboarding, and otherwise rolling on the hardwood floors of Polaris Hall (Brunberg Co.) in a room full of his friends and loved ones. The song sequences have been shot alone while dancing. -Owns the venue along with Revolution Hall and Mississippi Studios).
“Sometimes we all feel alone when we’re surrounded, even if it’s family,” Brunberg said. Mercury, when asked about contrast. “We deliberately boxed ourselves into a corner, and barely appeared in the video, because we wanted to show the beautiful hubbub and chaos that was going on. It’s not that the narrator in the song is unreliable, the point is that, even “That even in the song, there are a lot of people playing roles, but the narrator still feels isolated and alone.”
Accomplished local performer Vanna O’Brien’s presence immediately stood out to us – we’d gathered around a table with her at Shaking the Tree earlier this year. Brunberg said she was once his therapist. “He has a wonderful sense of realism and empathy. Everyone in the video means a lot to me and the video’s director, James Westby: his daughter, my daughters, my old housemate and protégé Shelby Smith, Lisa Lipton, a musician with whom I I frequently collaborate with and co-own Mendelsohn’s (the classical music bar neighboring Mississippi Studios).”
Eilish’s song Why, co-written with her brother Finneas O’Connell, ended up on the group’s diverse album covers, covering songs ranging from David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” to Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America”, Brunberg and Landsverk. Are. Huge fan.
Landsverk explained, “Billy and Phineas are a unique songwriting team.” “His writing and production create a space that compels the listener to read. That’s a very refreshing thing these days, when it feels like everything else is screaming for attention.”
Landsverk described the musicality of “Getting Older”: “It’s a compact and spacious piece at the same time – a great vehicle for the narrator to process his thoughts on the heavy subject matter, with frequent harmonic twists against the simple, stepped melody. provides. The song’s lyrics contemplate and tease out different viewpoints and chains of thought until they come together for the soaring chorus punchline: ‘It’s so weird.'”