“Break! (My Heart)” by Viiola Bloom

It doesn’t take much to make me happy. A good song, a good cup of coffee and well, I really need synthesizer in my life. There, I said it. Much to my delight then, to hear the new song “Break! (My Heart)” from my new favorite artist, Viiola Bloom. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and whose real name is Andrew Muller, Viiola Bloom casts fantastic remnants of pop, electronica and David Bowie-like vocals in this dance track. Not for a minute does the steady stream of emotion and sonic escapes stop – Viiola Bloom takes flight.

“Break! (My Heart)” begins with a drum arrangement, the pounding of the waves like something is really gearing up. It grows, it evolves. When Muller starts to sing, his gut-deep voice is dark, almost nefarious sounding. He gives you a bit of the chills – the good kind. When I found you, your face was masked by disaster, he sings. The tempo, a tennis game between the vocals and the moving sidewalk underneath that is time warped from a 1980s John Hughes film (think Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark meets Kraftwerk, and dash in a bit of Fits And The Tantrums for now and you inch closer). You never could fit into my fantastic schemes, Muller continues. His deep voice has personality and grit, but the outer shell has tiny cracks. His soft side is peaking through, shooting through those slivers.

This song felt very communal to me. It felt like it took me to a crowded dance club. You can almost feel the sweat in the room, the perspiring bodies around you. Muller’s commanding voice, his sensual delivery is paramount to the song, but I think the music bed is a very close second. I was engulfed by the electricity, the quick electronic keys. I think a resurgence of the 80s music, the synth is happening in real time. Artists like Viiola Bloom are on the forefront and creating and shaping sound in such a new way that it doesn’t even feel like a machine or a computer. I think the electronic keys, showing semblances of Norwegian icons Aha, “Break! (My Heart)” have a beautiful melody in their simplicity.

This song really is pretty, it’s just a different kind of pretty. I think his heart is really broken. This is very selfish, but good thing. The goodness that comes from his breakup is for the better of his music. I loved Muller’s avant-garde voice, the mystery behind his words. I think the lines break, from my heart, these desires, these roving raw ambitions, made me realize that we all want what we shouldn’t have. We yearn for things that we know aren’t good for us, but we can’t resist. We fall prey.

To hear this song live would be a dream. I don’t think listening to it via my computer does it any justice. “Break! (My Heart)” is healing to me. It’s a celebration and an awakening of the spirit. The complexities and the industrial-like music bed put me on Cloud 9.

Mindy McCall