Mormor

Seth Nyquist, better known as MorMor, used to work in isolation. This self-contained process led to his 2018 breakout song “Heaven’s Only Wishful,” a stunningly singular ballad that stopped the world in its tracks and brought him personal praise from both Max Martin’s MXM Music and Steven Malkmus. His debut album Semblance, written and recorded during the pandemic lockdowns, followed in 2022. For his new era, however, collaboration is key. “Working alone sucks,” he says with a laugh, shaking his head at how things used to be. “It’s torturous and isolating.”

The days of detachment in this new era and in their place is a feeling of letting go and allowing others in. Celeste, the Brit and Mercury Prize nominee, appears on the brand new single “Like Heaven.” Her voice sits perfectly alongside Nyquist’s cut-glass tenor, arriving like an intoxicating cloud of smoke and pushing a song about finding hope in faithless times to truly ascend.

Celeste’s involvement was unplanned. “She came to [Rick Rubin’s Malibu studio] Shangri-La simply to hang out, but ended up jumping on the mix,” he says. “Her vocal was recorded in that first session and it remains in the final version. She captured a raw, immediate energy that couldn’t be recreated.”

Nyquist was keen to embrace that sense of freedom as he worked on the follow-up to Semblance. “There’s an element of spontaneity and rawness,” he explains. “I love melody and I have never run away from that but I have always had big visions, too.”

“It’s less about hiding behind metaphor and more about being open about what I’m actually feeling,” he adds. “I want to reveal parts of myself that others might not feel comfortable sharing.”

The shift that came with loosening his grip on the wheel also makes the future look like an exciting place to be.

“I used to think about how things would be received so much,” he says. “It started to shape decisions without me even realizing. I made music from the heart but there was always this pressure in the background. I’m not trying to control the narrative anymore.”

The music’s only going to get more unfiltered, more instinctive, and more extreme in places, Nyquist says, “and I’m fine with that.”