Ea Othilde (Heimdal Baklund) is a 21-year-old artist from Oslo who has released two EPs, ‘How I’d like it to fade’ (2021) and ‘Mary, aren’t you tired?’ (2023), and a full album, ‘I will not be like that’ (2025). The latter EP and the album both earned her a Spellemann (Norwegian Grammy) nomination in 2023 and she has appeared across a range of festivals including Oslo’s Øyafestivalen and the showcaser By:Larm and Trondheim’s Pstereo.
She’s mixed her genres up along the way and perfected the art of finding a balance between intricate musical structures and energetic performances and I’ll say straight off that her titles alone – mysterious yet straight to the point, were enough to secure my interest. They could be the titles of Victorian novels.
A new EP is on the way, called ‘You’ll leave the city’. I had to laugh because that sounds like the perfect antithesis to The League of Gentleman’s ‘You’ll never leave’, which was the motto of the fictitious northern English town of imbeciles and in-breds called Royston Vasey in the black comedy TV series of the 1990s.
In any event it is intensely declarative, as is this last single from the EP, ‘I forgot you’, a song about someone who was portraying her as the “bad person” in the story after a bad ending to things. She says she still feels like his reaction was very unfair and that the song represents that frustration and anger.
You know, that position is replete with decorum, isn’t it? I’ve lost count of the songs we’ve reviewed where she’s so full of rage she might as well be sticking pins in a voodoo doll of him as recording a song. It’s like a breath of fresh air.
And yet at the same time she has reached a definitive conclusion – he’s history.
There’s something pervadingly dark and gritty about the song. Founded on a mesmeric beat, it has the hallmarks of Oslo’s East Side underbelly about it rather than the posher West and it’s about as ‘alt’ as you get currently emanating from the capital.
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The five track EP explores life as a young adult without anything steady to hold on to. The songs revolve around relationships, insecurity, longing, and trying to understand yourself in your early 20s.I can’t speak for Norway but here in the UK that’s the staple diet of most people in that age bracket and it should resonate profoundly with them.
Find her on:
Website (label): https://kokeplate.com/artists/ea-othilde
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eaobaklund
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ea_othilde/
Bandcamp: https://eaothilde.bandcamp.com/
Photo credit: Marit Othilie Thorvik
