Where the wild things are
Wild Belle’s Natalie and Elliot Bergman on their debut album, their musical past and their bright future
if you happened to be in Colorado in January, you may have seen a bikini-clad Natalie Bergman running through the snow. On tour with Wild Belle, the band she leads with her older brother Elliot, Natalie was bored — so she invented a game. “It was 18 degrees below zero, and we were sitting in the hot tub,” she says. “I decided we each had to race across our friend’s lawn in our bathing suits, shake the snow off of an Aspen tree and run back.” Elliot nods. “Then we tried to see who could stay in the snow the longest making snow angels,” he adds. “Our family is really competitive.”
In moments like these, the Bergmans’ sibling dynamic seems typical — competitive, playful, collaborative — except for one thing: this brothersister duo is on the brink of musical stardom.
On March 12, Natalie, 24, and Elliot, 31, released their debut LP, “Isles,” which they self-produced in a matter of inspiration-fueled months in 2012. Their first single, “Keep You,” went viral last year before they even found a distributor for the album, landing them a three-record deal with Columbia Records. Soon after, they were performing on “Conan,” signing on for music festivals like Coachella and Sasquatch, playing at parties for fashion labels and gracing the pages of Vogue and T, the New York Times’ style magazine. But even awash in accolades, the Bergmans refuse to buy into their own hype. “Our brains don’t operate that way,” says Natalie. “We’re psyched that people are starting to recognize us, but to us, success is just continuing to be able to write and record music.”
They’ve done just that for as long as they can remember. According to Natalie, forming Wild Belle was nothing short of their destiny. “That’s why we’re here on this Earth,” she says. “To learn music, to create music, to share music.” The pair and their siblings, fashion designer Elise and poet Bennet, were born to a painter and an artistic entrepreneur in Barrington, Ill., both of whom encouraged independence, freethinking and careers in the arts. The Bergmans often held family sing-alongs, where, says Natalie, “we’d all flock to different instruments. My dad would play guitar, sometimes Elliot would play clarinet, and some of us would just use our voices.