Grimson Releases New Single 'Set Gently'

Berlin-based songwriter and animator Aiden Burglund has shared the new single "Set Gently" under his indie pop moniker Grimson. The track follows the release of 2022's "Household" which Under the Radar Magazine said "recall[s] Laurel Canyon pop greats like Harry Nilsson" and "Good Dreams," which American Songwriter described as "a psychedelic pop nursery rhyme begging for the simple comforts of rest..."

A snippet of the track's audio is currently trending on Tiktok. Berglund asked his followers share a short clip of the song and to describe someone they once had a crush on, and hundreds of fans responded by posting their own videos.

In the video for "Set Gently," Berglund makes one of his grandest left turns yet. The video follows him as he leaves a crowded G train at the Smith and 9th Street Brooklyn subway stop near the south Brooklyn neighborhood of Gowanus-where Berglund spent much of his childhood before moving to his new home Berlin.

Berglund stops the subway doors from closing with his guitar case and once he gains his composure, he sets it down at the entry way to one of the station's long escalators. He takes a seat on one of it's steps and plays the gentle song as he descends. The camera stays on him as he plays the song in full.

A graduate of Bard College's film program, Berglund tends to lose himself in the world-building of his video productions-his meticulous work ethic is on full display in the gorgeously animated "Household" and the dream-like "I Hate Myself Now." While all of his previous videos had an element of surrealism and psychedelic escapism to them, Berglund eskews that impulse with "Set Gently," instead choosing to show his own face in the most honest representation of himself to date.

"I thought for a while that I was going to add some animations to it to try to make it more 'Grimson-eque' in a way, but decided not to do it," Berglund says of the naked approach to the video. "Not just because I was able to edit the footage to look like it matched the video, but also because the song is a bit more personal, in a way."

It's a fitting way to capture the heartbreak contained in the song's exposed-nerve lyrics and delicate Elliot Smith-inspired instrumentation. According to Berglund, any bells and whistles would get in the way of the sadness he was feeling at the time he wrote the song. "It's the internal monologue of the moment you realize that the person you've spent years with no longer loves you, and even though the split hasn't officially happened, there's no saving the relationship," he says of the song, "Instead, the song attempts to comfort by encouraging acceptance, despite what you're motivated to do otherwise."

In a way, it captures a similar honest representation that Berglund shows of himself on his popular TikTok page. Ever since joining the platform, he amassed 15k alternative community followers-even going viral on several occasions from his humorous videos.

As the song's chorus swells, he offers an affirmation for anyone who has been in a similar position as him. "So set gently my brother and you will last for so much longer as you long for her and how it was," he sings in a hushed and lonesome croon.

The video was cut together from several takes of Berglund riding down and playing on the Subway platform escalator-the longest in New York City. In a last minute decision, Berglund decided to keep in the gentle hum of the escalator as a way to capture the sense of his bruised emotional state against a world that keeps spinning.

"I left the sound in the video of the escalator in because it is some kind of juxtaposition of this true vulnerability with this industrial machine," Berglund says, "It was like delicacy versus brutalism. I think there's something about this weak, little heart fighting against something that is perceived to be a confusing machine."

As Berglund finishes the song, he steps off of the escalator with his guitar in-hand and walks over to the next one across the platform. All that we know is that he is going down with another song to sing.

Watch the new music video here: