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IRIS CALTWAIT
Again, for the first time(777 Music)
Add date: 11.11.2025
Release date: 11.7.2025
Links:
Apple Music
Bandcamp
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Spotify
Tidal
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Two life-changing events have taken place since Iris’s last album, 2020's Love and Other Disasters. A relationship fractured, poisoned by manipulation, causing deep confusion, and in the autumn of 2021, the loss of her beloved maternal grandmother.
The new album, inspired by these huge waves of pain, is a vivid masterwork exploring the tension between the emerging adult and the cheeky inner child that lurks in all of us. With her classy songwriting and confessional lyrics, 'Again, For The First Time' performs a kind of emotional archeology, returning to the child-self to unlock a bolder state of being better able to handle the world.
Now 28, Vilde Iris Hartveit Kolltveit remains deeply introspective, her songwriting generated by the desire to understand herself, and "the never-ending work that is our own mental health. The loss of her grandmother, with whom she shared a sensibility prone to anxiety and depression, inspired the extraordinary track Dragonfly (So open your windows / And let her in with the rain), whose swelling harmonies seem to mirror spontaneous bursts of feeling.
"I was so connected to her in my core," Iris recalls. "Losing her was like losing a body part. You continue with your life, but you can still feel the limb. The grief was too big, and I remember thinking we wouldn’t be able to move past this, and that from now on, we are going to start losing everyone. It made me question if it’s all worth it, caring so much, loving so deeply..»
Yet Dragonfly became an unlikely celebration, "a cry from the heart, to continue to love people". The song has a companion piece in the slowly-intensifying electropop anthem Alchemy, which closes the record, in which Iris imagines tears turning into gold(?): So let me love until I'm weightless / Let me run until I'm home.
"I associated the art of alchemy with my own process and struggles," she explains. "Sometimes it feels like I'm trying to perform a magic trick, changing the way my brain is wired. I'm going over the same material and feelings over and over, expecting a new result..."
Iris's life experience has always been marked by highs and lows, and these rushes provide creative peaks that give rise to prolific songwriting - her lockdown album was written in just two or three months. But when she began medication for depression (?) three years ago, she noticed an unwelcome change: a more muted experience of the world, “a strange fogginess”, and a distance from others, devoid of tears or true connections.
She explores this unsettling development in the effortlessly catchy I'm In The Corner, Alone: (I'm the world's happiest mannikin / just don't say it if you see what's really happening) written with Ake Olofsson.
The delicious ode to skinny-dipping, Spring Rush marks the return to her natural highs: Time to make the gods blush / Are you ready for the spring rush? A pop paean to springtime through a midsummer lens, the song is "a celebration of pure euphoria», and a quick diversion into the sexy, playful sound that permeated her last record.
The album begins evocatively with the long-ago voices of her own parents, talking to a four year-old Iris riding her bike in the snow. I Remember features a lush choral setting reminiscent of American hymnals. Writing with William Dinesen and Jon Olav in Copenhagen, Iris paints a picture of how she'd like for it to be, how she wish life had been like : I never had any walls to break down / It was easy for me… I was always on the move.
“A lot of the songs on the album are about trying to reconnect to the child I was and to the person I want to be," she says. "When I was little, I wasn't afraid to get angry.. Now I’ve had to relearn getting mad, and reconnect with indignation .»
But she is learning to lose her temper again. Serpentine, a slice of classy, ageless pop songwriting, was inspired by the shocking loss of a friendship two years ago: You stepped on my toes and I stayed quiet / as If I don’t mind it.
"That whole thing was a catalyst for a lot of feelings on this album," she explains: the painful experience reconnected her with rage and indignation. Shaky (which arrives with its own evocative biographical video) is a song of two halves: it began as a meditation on anxiety, long ago, but the music’s abrupt mid-way shift to something strong and defiant honours her recent experience: If you're angry, girl / Let it out.
Iris has always been fascinated by mutability. "It's a sort of freedom when I change from something to something else," she once said. Love affairs used to be passionate but brief. Where is the space for the changing self within a stable relationship? What happens to the very intense emotions when love isn't tearing your heart out?
These days those emotions go into songwriting. The tender elegy This Is The Place, written with Glen Roberts and her long-time collaborator Vetle Junker, is a mental exercise in travelling back to a yearning, limerent romantic space: You've got a hold on me / My body is at your disposal / I'm staying up all night just in case...
"This is a feeling from the past, but it’s important," she explains. "It's about the longing I have for a real connection and a big love; how I would undermine myself for that. I have spent so much of my life doing that. I still do it, just in a less self-destructive way.»
The album is a collaboration between Iris and top Norwegian producer Askjell Solstrand (Sigrid, Aurora); their unique symbiosis can also be heard throughout 2020's Love and Other Disasters.
Solstrand, schooled in Nordic jazz and classical piano, is known for his extraordinary balance of space and lushness and his exquisitely stacked harmonies: his hand-made electronica almost seems to breathe. Though Iris craves minimalism, she explains that she can't help but build warm, shimmering textures with his subtle electronic palette: "I have to accept I'm not a minimalist!" While the production is endlessly sparing, it is never icy or detached.
Harmonies appear unexpectedly like little puffs of air - some sung with Askjell (Backseat); some with friends in the Swedish countryside (Alchemy) and others with fellow participants on a rare songwriting camp (Throw All That Love Away). Songs were written with a clutch of top songwriters and producers from Bergen and beyond: Ake Olofsson, Lauritz Christiansen, Botaii, Jimi Somewhere&Milo and Mugisho.
These days, the future is an adventure once more as Iris learns to navigate her full self with all its ups and downs: "Things are very dramatic again," she laughs. It is far better to write from a state of highs and lows than a middle ground: "I take my writing straight from the stomach. It is very bodily."
As for the inner child?
"I can't keep looking back,” she says. “I need to see who I have become and try to love that also. Though with this album, I am mostly longing to connect to who I was and who I thought I’d be. Trying to figure out how to take life’s punches and keep moving”
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
Two life-changing events have taken place since Iris’s last album, 2020's Love and Other Disasters. A relationship fractured, poisoned by manipulation, causing deep confusion, and in the autumn of 2021, the loss of her beloved maternal grandmother.
The new album, inspired by these huge waves of pain, is a vivid masterwork exploring the tension between the emerging adult and the cheeky inner child that lurks in all of us. With her classy songwriting and confessional lyrics, 'Again, For The First Time' performs a kind of emotional archeology, returning to the child-self to unlock a bolder state of being better able to handle the world.
Now 28, Vilde Iris Hartveit Kolltveit remains deeply introspective, her songwriting generated by the desire to understand herself, and "the never-ending work that is our own mental health. The loss of her grandmother, with whom she shared a sensibility prone to anxiety and depression, inspired the extraordinary track Dragonfly (So open your windows / And let her in with the rain), whose swelling harmonies seem to mirror spontaneous bursts of feeling.
"I was so connected to her in my core," Iris recalls. "Losing her was like losing a body part. You continue with your life, but you can still feel the limb. The grief was too big, and I remember thinking we wouldn’t be able to move past this, and that from now on, we are going to start losing everyone. It made me question if it’s all worth it, caring so much, loving so deeply..»
Yet Dragonfly became an unlikely celebration, "a cry from the heart, to continue to love people". The song has a companion piece in the slowly-intensifying electropop anthem Alchemy, which closes the record, in which Iris imagines tears turning into gold(?): So let me love until I'm weightless / Let me run until I'm home.
"I associated the art of alchemy with my own process and struggles," she explains. "Sometimes it feels like I'm trying to perform a magic trick, changing the way my brain is wired. I'm going over the same material and feelings over and over, expecting a new result..."
Iris's life experience has always been marked by highs and lows, and these rushes provide creative peaks that give rise to prolific songwriting - her lockdown album was written in just two or three months. But when she began medication for depression (?) three years ago, she noticed an unwelcome change: a more muted experience of the world, “a strange fogginess”, and a distance from others, devoid of tears or true connections.
She explores this unsettling development in the effortlessly catchy I'm In The Corner, Alone: (I'm the world's happiest mannikin / just don't say it if you see what's really happening) written with Ake Olofsson.
The delicious ode to skinny-dipping, Spring Rush marks the return to her natural highs: Time to make the gods blush / Are you ready for the spring rush? A pop paean to springtime through a midsummer lens, the song is "a celebration of pure euphoria», and a quick diversion into the sexy, playful sound that permeated her last record.
The album begins evocatively with the long-ago voices of her own parents, talking to a four year-old Iris riding her bike in the snow. I Remember features a lush choral setting reminiscent of American hymnals. Writing with William Dinesen and Jon Olav in Copenhagen, Iris paints a picture of how she'd like for it to be, how she wish life had been like : I never had any walls to break down / It was easy for me… I was always on the move.
“A lot of the songs on the album are about trying to reconnect to the child I was and to the person I want to be," she says. "When I was little, I wasn't afraid to get angry.. Now I’ve had to relearn getting mad, and reconnect with indignation .»
But she is learning to lose her temper again. Serpentine, a slice of classy, ageless pop songwriting, was inspired by the shocking loss of a friendship two years ago: You stepped on my toes and I stayed quiet / as If I don’t mind it.
"That whole thing was a catalyst for a lot of feelings on this album," she explains: the painful experience reconnected her with rage and indignation. Shaky (which arrives with its own evocative biographical video) is a song of two halves: it began as a meditation on anxiety, long ago, but the music’s abrupt mid-way shift to something strong and defiant honours her recent experience: If you're angry, girl / Let it out.
Iris has always been fascinated by mutability. "It's a sort of freedom when I change from something to something else," she once said. Love affairs used to be passionate but brief. Where is the space for the changing self within a stable relationship? What happens to the very intense emotions when love isn't tearing your heart out?
These days those emotions go into songwriting. The tender elegy This Is The Place, written with Glen Roberts and her long-time collaborator Vetle Junker, is a mental exercise in travelling back to a yearning, limerent romantic space: You've got a hold on me / My body is at your disposal / I'm staying up all night just in case...
"This is a feeling from the past, but it’s important," she explains. "It's about the longing I have for a real connection and a big love; how I would undermine myself for that. I have spent so much of my life doing that. I still do it, just in a less self-destructive way.»
The album is a collaboration between Iris and top Norwegian producer Askjell Solstrand (Sigrid, Aurora); their unique symbiosis can also be heard throughout 2020's Love and Other Disasters.
Solstrand, schooled in Nordic jazz and classical piano, is known for his extraordinary balance of space and lushness and his exquisitely stacked harmonies: his hand-made electronica almost seems to breathe. Though Iris craves minimalism, she explains that she can't help but build warm, shimmering textures with his subtle electronic palette: "I have to accept I'm not a minimalist!" While the production is endlessly sparing, it is never icy or detached.
Harmonies appear unexpectedly like little puffs of air - some sung with Askjell (Backseat); some with friends in the Swedish countryside (Alchemy) and others with fellow participants on a rare songwriting camp (Throw All That Love Away). Songs were written with a clutch of top songwriters and producers from Bergen and beyond: Ake Olofsson, Lauritz Christiansen, Botaii, Jimi Somewhere&Milo and Mugisho.
These days, the future is an adventure once more as Iris learns to navigate her full self with all its ups and downs: "Things are very dramatic again," she laughs. It is far better to write from a state of highs and lows than a middle ground: "I take my writing straight from the stomach. It is very bodily."
As for the inner child?
"I can't keep looking back,” she says. “I need to see who I have become and try to love that also. Though with this album, I am mostly longing to connect to who I was and who I thought I’d be. Trying to figure out how to take life’s punches and keep moving”