Comes on vinyl LP.
Before Mercy, Bergman was best known as one half of the indie-pop duo Wild Belle, crafting breezy, groove-laced songs alongside her brother. But this record arrives under radically different circumstances. In 2019, Bergman’s father and stepmother were killed in a sudden car crash—a trauma that halted her life mid-motion. In the aftermath, she retreated to a silent monastery in New Mexico, cutting herself off from the noise of the world. There, with little more than solitude and scripture, she began writing what would become Mercy—a record shaped equally by grief and an urgent need for spiritual meaning. The result is her first fully solo work, released May 7, 2021 via Third Man Records, and a stark departure from her past: a gospel-inflected indie record that treats faith not as aesthetic, but as survival.
At first listen, Mercy feels deceptively gentle. The arrangements drift between reggae rhythms, vintage soul, and lo-fi psychedelic pop—music that glows rather than burns. But beneath that softness lies a deliberate tension: Bergman borrows the language of classic gospel and filters it through modern indie minimalism. “Talk to the Lord” opens the album like a hymn carried on island breeze, its simplicity disarming. Elsewhere, “Shine Your Light on Me” and “I Will Praise You” lean into repetition, like mantras trying to will belief into permanence. Her voice—high, airy, almost childlike—can feel uncanny at first. Mercy isn’t about religion as doctrine. It’s about faith as a lifeline. And Bergman holds onto it with both hands, even as it trembles.
