“By some metrics, Estonia is the most irreligious country in the world.” — Wikipedia entry for Irreligion in Estonia which, yes, that’s a thing…
Words by Jason Lee; Photos by Aidan Watson
Now, we’re not gonna outright claim that a band called Theophobia (definition: a morbid fear or hatred of God or religion) would write a song about “The Most Wanted Woman in Estonia” solely cuz most Estonians are godless heathens but we’re not discounting the theory either esp. since right off the bat co-singer and lyricist Dylan Mars Greenberg rhymes “Estonia” with “anhedonia” (definition: the inability to experience joy or pleasure) which only reinforces the notion that the song could be about a lapsed Valkyrie who’s given up believing in Valhalla and taken to wearing sackcloth instead of swan feathers after escorting too many ungrateful warriors across the transom and decided to draw the curtains and live as an isolated shut-in instead like a Nordic Nora Desmond…
The most wanted woman in Estonia
She was loved by every man somehow
So haunted glum and anhedonia
Finds not a drop of pride or pleasure now
…so anyway here’s a band that’ll teach you some new vocabulary if nothing else while fusing underlying gothiness with neon-splattered Goosebumps style goofiness even when exploring dark subject matter (It doesn’t hurt that Dylan could be the long-lost lovechild of Robert Smith and Cyndi Lauper!) with music that likewise crosses streams like say Sparks with Rocky Horror, or the smokey cabaret vibes of Morphine with the zoot-suited mutant disco of Kid Creole and the Coconuts (learn your Beantown and NYC music history already!), with Theophobia co-founders/co-fronters/childhood friends Dylan and Matt Ellin bringing a fittingly Fellinesque fascination to their “floorshow at the end of the universe” live shows…
…but we digress seeing as we’re here to talk about “The Most Wanted Woman in Estonia” which masterfully captures that certain former-Eastern-Bloc regional vibe (tho’ maybe not “former” for long!) both lyrically and musically and we’re not sure what’s up with the European countries in question and their proclivity for creating music that sounds at once celebratory but also like it’s hurling inexorably towards certain doom but yet they got the vibe down cold what with all those off-kilter, lopsided oom-pah-pahs and boom-chicka-booms…
…as heard in the various hopaks and polkas and horas and sârbă and schottische played on plinky barrelhouse pianos and wheezing accordions and heck even hammered dulcimers in some cases tending to sound like out-of-control careening mine cars that long since jumped the tracks oft with semi-fatalistic lyrics to match and when Theophobia drops an “Eddie Van Estonia” finger-tapped hair metal guitar solo into the mix it’s a (maybe not so) surprisingly perfect fit…
…cuz even non-Eastern-European astute musicians like Prince totally got it that there’s nothing like the impending entropic unravelling of society and of the entire planet to make ya wanna throw yr hands up in the air and exclaim, “let’s dance like there’s no tomorrow—cuz maybe there ain’t!” with the irony being that modern-day Estonia despite or maybe be-cuz of its proliferation of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, existentialists, and just plain ol’ skeptics is a country that not only managed to overthrow both the Nazis and the Commies, the latter through a bloodless “singing revolution,”…
….but one that’s since emerged to be a Nordic superpower of sorts ranking near the top of international indices for quality of life, education (considered the best in Europe), economic growth, press freedom (ranked 6th in the world by Reporters sans Frontière while the US sits at 55th, likely sinking even lower soon), etc. etc. which makes it possibly one of the better places on Earth to ride out Armagideon Time that is if you choose to make a bid for surviving…
…meanwhile it’s the good ol’ U.S. of A. that feels more like a Baltic backwater these days where “all she treasured changed like weather” and who better to capture the vibe and manage to have some fun with it than Theophobia whose cinematic songcraft makes all their songs feel like they were written for some yet to be released underground film which in this case of “TMWWIE” feels like it should star Eszter Balint…
…which lucky for all involved Dylan Mars Greenberg happens to be an accomplished filmmaker and music video director—as covered in a previous Deli feature, check it out!—so we got this cool clip to go along with “The Most Wanted Woman in Estonia” (see top of page) and rather than us continuing to blather on we’re now gonna hand the mic over to DMG who generously offered to give us more details (lots more details!) on the song & the vid via some 4AM Instagram messaging so keep reading after the jump for the real deal first-hand account of what’s up yo…
Theophobia is:
Dylan Mars Greenberg – Vocals, kazoo, slide whistle, percussion
Matt Ellin – Vocals, guitar, percussion
Alan Worm – Guitar, artificial banjo, backing vocals
Michael Butterly – Piano, organ, synths
Nick Cereola – Bass
Chris Michaels – Drums
Featuring Paul D. Millar on synths, percussion and backing vocals
Recorded and mixed by Paul D. Millar
at Daisy Chain and Bug Sound East, NYC
On the origins of “The Most Wanted Woman in Estonia”:
I was really inspired by “The Fat Lady of Limburg” by Brian Eno when I first came up with the basic melody for the song. I came up with that chorus first, but it was a lot slower in my head, like a sort of ‘70s art-pop ballad. Eventually, I stitched the whole thing together and decided it should be faster! Matt and I began developing the song in 2022 and played a couple shows before we were a full band, with just a backing track we made and Matt on guitar. The final song sounds a lot more like Sparks than Eno I think, and even feels a little punk-y, almost pop punky. I’ve seen people skank to it at shows, so I guess there’s even a slight ska vibe in the bounciness. I love seeing how people react, maybe in ways I don’t expect, to the song. It recently got played on WFMU too.
On the music video:
I was actually pretty blocked up on video ideas, which is unlike me. Matt had the idea to do a video sort of inspired by the movie Forbidden Zone. So, myself and my partner Glitter Macabre painted this big mural of Hell on a huge piece of canvas. The black paint actually seeped through the canvas and totally fucked up my wall, I’ve been washing it off for weeks and probably have to still do one more round. Hopefully my landlord doesn’t see this! Matt, Glitter, and my friends Jac and Phill all made props with me out of cardboard. We wanted it to look like a cross between Forbidden Zone, a Top of the Pops performance, and a crazy public access show. Something really great is that this is the first music video we’ve made as a full band.
On collaborators and other contributors to the video:
We have these great performers and puppets in the video. Humanette is a performer who I’ve known for probably a decade, before they were Humanette actually, but I won’t give their full name here because it’s sort of a dual identity like a superhero. They’re a big part of the Clown Cult scene that’s been huge in Brooklyn and I think is really cool, definitely in line with what we’re doing. They also danced at some of our live shows including one of our biggest parties, “Queer Clown Bat Mitzvah”. We also have Viruscella who’s a fantastic drag performer I met through my partner. They’re extremely unique and sometimes I see them at 3 Dollar Bill which is next to our practice space. I also cast Viruscella in my Super8 short film The Triangular Door, and in both this video and that one they brought their puppets. They’re called the Viru-friends!
We also have Unibuddy who is a dancer I met through my mom, and Neva Insidious. Neva is a drag performer and professional dancer—a very outside the box person who does really cool performances. We’ve been friends since we were teenagers, I’m so happy to have Neva in my video! I used to watch my sister at his and his wife’s house with their son who was my sister’s age. I went to this rooftop get together my mom was doing where she played music and he started dancing wildly like that. I thought he was amazing. Anyone can dance to Theophobia but he is the only one who is Officially Licensed to do so.
On puppets, clowns, and cameras:
Plus we have this amazing crazy puppet called Ethel built by my friend Muna Muhsin, and she actually rents Ethel out for parties. I met Ethel because Muna brought her to a screening of her short film at my event VIDEODOME, that day a lot of people brought puppets. Sabrina Egan also brought her puppets that day. I asked both of them if we could have their puppets in the video, so we have three different artist’s puppets featured in the video.
I love to have human and puppet and clown characters. I think that’s what the song needs. Sabrina was also such a huge help and produced the video with us. We shot it in my mom’s house so we basically had to take this backdrop I painted and then transform the whole dining room into hell and then squeeze everyone in there.
Tom Manco built this diorama of Hell for us that we used for some of the wide shots for forced perspective, and what’s cool is there was even these flames that could actually be moved by pulling on a tap in the diorama! So it gives the video a real George Méliès feel where the special effects are actually mechanical and physical. Tom also did the miniatures and backgrounds for the video I directed for Josephine Network’s Tall Buildings!
Me and the co-director Adam Ninyo shot the whole thing on an Omni Movie camera from the ‘80s that was lent to me by our engineer Paul D Millar who really helped shape our song into the sound we wanted. Paul is basically an analog god. He works with one of our favorite groups the Lemon Twigs on the audio side but also shoots a lot of their videos. I love his solo project Slugbug too, and he shoots a lot of those videos either on analog video or 16mm film. If we had more money we would have wanted to do this on film too, but analog video gives a really cool effect too I think!
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And lastly, as a postscript, don’t make the mistake of sleeping on the single’s b-side “Chili Dog Incarnate” which highlights the duality of Greenberg and Ellin’s respective songwriting styles, which the band describes as “a whimsical cautionary tale of class disparity that recalls The Mothers of Invention and The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band” and look we know you all need a whimsical cautionary talk right now, dear readers, and finally for a nice little bio of the band written up by none other than Matt Ellin himself be sure to check out Theophobia’s Bandcamp page. Peace out…