Frida Hyvönen - Pop in a Muchard White

For more than a decade, the Swedish indie cauldron has been one of the hottest in Europe. There's no end to the talent roaming the streets of Gothenburg, Stockholm, Malmö. Not just metal (Opeth, Pain of Salvation, Meshuggah), or ABBA, Europe and Roxette: the Scandinavian peninsula's underground now holds its most precious gems, from Jens Lekman to El Perro Del Mar, via José González and Wildbirds & Peacedrums, all the way to the deepest, blackest deep soul of Kissey Asplund. Among so much promise, one stands out above all: the very blonde Frida Hyvönen. Born to a Norwegian father and a Swedish mother, she started making waves back in (was it really?) 2005, when she began performing in the various ultra-indie clubs of Stockholm and Oslo, buoyed by illustrious friendships (Jens Lekman, José González), but above all by a sensational voice and a piano in perpetual emotional turmoil.

She's nearly thirty when Secretly Canadian takes notice of her, having rushed (not a little) to distribute her brilliant debut, Until Death Comes (2006), beyond her home borders, snatching her away from the more eager (if shyer) Licking Fingers (Concretes). And as with so many of her fellow countrymen from the dashing pianist's homeland (remember the Shout Out Louds case?), her arrival on our shores comes with inexplicable delay.

Celebrated at home as the new Laura Nyro, or as Abba's Frida reimagined as Joni Mitchell (you decide), Frida Hyvönen is the classic Nordic songwriter with immense melodic potential. She's cited everywhere as part of the Swedish female pop scene, even though she's light years away from the likes of Sophie Zelmani, Cajsa Stina Åkerström, Sarah Isaksson, Lisa Ekdahl: the pop sensibility in her compositions is all there, and in some of her songs it's almost too baroque, wisely seasoned with an ocean of touching melodies, private torments, regressive flavors, and valium-laced arrangements that lead her toward peaks far higher than mere, exhilarating Scandinavian radio pop.

If today in Germany female new pop looks for fresh escape routes through quirky laptop manipulations and catchy analogue patchworks (Justine Electra), in Canada through elegant electro-folk metamorphoses (Feist), in France through homespun depictions of an electronic-theatrical bent (Eglantine Gouzy), in Spain through electronic undulations faded into a minimal, Bjork-leaning sauce (Burbuja), and in Italy through cabaret rock with genetically Broadway roots (Beatrice Antolini), in Sweden it's essentially marked by an absolute return to basics: piano and voice, joined by a supporting rhythm section, nothing more, nothing less.

A cultured simplicity of intent that finds in Sweden's own Frida its most notable interpreter.

A self-declared fan of her friend Jenny Wilson, our young woman loves Joni Mitchell and Nina Simone, but also claims she only listened to Laura Nyro after reading comparisons concerning her own melodramatic style. In love with New York musicals and the retro charm of 1950s American love songs (the beat generation era), she loves performing in perfect solitude in her shows, backed by a formidable stage presence and the absolute strength of her compositions, deliberately spare and damnably compelling, wrapped in melodies of great impact, submerged under rivers of words that go straight to the heart. Indeed, it's to her winding lyrics that Frida entrusts the other half of her art. Within her verses we come across personal stories of passion, botched escapes, London love affairs, scientific contemplations (!), Eastern exaltations, exhausting post-adolescent pains, and even sarcastic family memories. Frida's world is a boldly coloured picture where any feeling thickened in the soul and in the glow of one's own memories can take refuge.

It's no coincidence that the title of her debut draws on a private, nuptial feeling: Until Death Comes is a casket of small, fragile songs.

A skipping piano, a voice light yet already self-assured ("I Drive My Friend"): in the end, it takes her very little to materialise in all her private charm, and when the dreamy mood of "Djuna" wraps around us, we immediately sense that, although this is a very small record, it should nonetheless be treated as an already mature work. The enchantment of elegy shows through in all its emotional shades in "Valerie", emptiness and fullness alternate in "You Never Got Me Right", the power of memory reclaims its territory in "Once I Was A Serene Teenaged Child" ("Once I was a serene teenaged child/ once I felt your cock against my thigh"), and the piano cradles the voice (or vice versa) in the mournful "N.Y.". And it's always a whirl of apparently irreconcilable contrasts, yet one that, miraculously, is already heading towards reconciliation. So it's no surprise that grace pervades the voice in "Today, Tuesday", while the words grow heavy and meditative.

Then, after all, there are always those little marches à-la Joni Mitchell ("The Modern"), or a bit of soul-pop reinvigorated by horns ("Come Another Night") to keep us company amid this tide of conflicting emotions. And, even as it leaves us prey to the deepest, most visceral sadness, over the delicately carried notes of a "Straight Thin Line" that confronts head-on and looks straight into the eyes of that thing called anorexia, the feeling is one of those you really can't explain to yourself.

A hugely successful record, Until Death Comes, is followed by a side project. "Frida Hyvonen Gives You" is its name, Pudel its first outing.

Built essentially on the properly academic use of some pianistic b-sides from her young repertoire, with it the young muse fashions, pop-craftsman-style, a series of touching harmonic frescoes for classical dance: imagine a Laura Nyro composing a romantic musical, or the Carole King of "Writer" in an even more measured version. The vigorous pianist decides to orchestrate in her own way parts originally conceived for the theatrical show Pudel, commissioned in 2005 by choreographer Dorte Olesen. Hence the wish to bookend it all with two rustic little tunes, "Intro" and "Outro", hummed while skipping merrily along a battered little road; two carefree nursery rhymes acting as hinges around eight ballads that carry with them the scent of the Broadway of old, brushing against the deepest comfort of old New York romanticism, the kind able to light up the top floors of the old buildings on 52nd Street, between Fifth and Seventh Avenue, where once only the courteous silhouettes of a ballet corps shone. In this sense, it's no coincidence that it's the melody of "Came A Storm" that shapes Frida's own birdsong.

The record's sixth track is simply an alien touch on the rest of the production, something that recalls the doubled-up moans of the great Judee Sill, rediscovered a few years ago in her "quietest" version by none other than O'Rourke on "Dreams Come True – Hi, Love You Right Heartily Here".

Everything else is an elegant cocktail, at times a touch pompous, of seductive variations, now heightened by a teasing violin ("Fall Is My Lover"), now made lush by a little choir typical of young neoclassical opera companies ("Oh! Oh!"). Throughout this choreographic showcase, Frida chooses to put herself, in "Paus Piano", at the centre of attention, leaving everything else outside the room, while in "New Messiah" she does exactly the opposite, wrapping herself in her small orchestra, amid tubas, clarinets, accordions and double basses.

Songs that turn into sweets, especially when the talented pianist abandons the tonal rawness of her debut, letting herself be carried away a little too much by colourful melodic dustings, the same ones that lead, in "This Night I Recall", to something already heard, anything but surprising.

If on Until Death Comes the attitude was to engage and be engaged without pumping things up too much, relying perhaps only on an old white wall-mounted Muchard, on Pudel brand new needs arise, aimed at achieving a fuller sense of exaltation. A transitional work, one that lays the groundwork for her first true major opus: Silence Is Wild (Secretly Canadian, 2008).

Meanwhile, our pianist has become a little star of the Swedish scene (?) and beyond. Her concerts are intimate and penetrating, a trait that further boosts the strong indie-media cult built up by her following across the web.

With Silence Is Wild the butterfly from Robertsfors opens her wings to the world. The essential restlessness of Until Death Comes and the orchestral extravagance of Pudel are now blended together with impressive awareness. On this, her second effort, Frida makes silence an emotional vehicle; pianistic pauses and anthology-worthy melodic restarts blow like a north wind at dusk, while a dirty dance complete with a déjà vu moment in the central chorus (Bonnie Tyler!) raises the curtain on what will prove to be a carefully curated exhibition of genuine pop gems.

It's the early Nineties, and a very young Frida crosses paths with her first love. A passion born through sweetest letters, May flowers, awkward contacts at the piano ("Dirty Dancing"). The opening track fully showcases Hyvonen's self-referential storytelling, "Enemy Within" puts everyone in line with its honeyed, enveloping trot, while it's the vocal emotion reached in "Highway 2 U" that takes on that certain epochal quality. Its ecstatic crescendo gains energy as the adorable singer-songwriter's long, slender fingers move slowly across the piano.

The impact of Silence Is Wild is powerful. From the very start it's clear the album is unlikely to have any lulls. Indeed, the subsequent tribute to London (written while Frida was touring our country), with its gentlemen's clubs, its pipes and its grey allure, catches both us and Hyvönen herself off guard. It's a penetrating pop march, the kind that quality radio simply can't afford to miss.

The autobiographical approach runs hand in hand with the music: "My Cousin" is a fiery inlay of family memories and obvious truths. There's room for everything on this record. Take, for instance, the eccentric "Scandinavian Blonde", placed like a can of orangeade after climbing the ingenious, strenuous stairs of "Science". Then again, the absence of any significant dip in quality on Silence Is Wild is blatantly undeniable.

The comfortable "Pony" is rickieleejonesian through and through, just as "Oh Shangai" recalls the Joni Mitchell of the second phase, before an alarming question closes the doors. Once again it's the extreme unease of a fading love that unsettles young Frida. The fear of losing the person she loves once more, of ruining everything through hasty conclusions or excessive giving, sinks back into the heart of this tender girl.

Accompanying this endless torment is yet another turn of piano notes and that deep anguish filling the soul, like the wind slipping silently through the window, penetrating with subtle intensity into the secret rooms of the self.

Like the pop prodigy Jens Lekman, the fair-haired musician from Robertsfors also knows how to take her time and turn long gaps between records to her advantage, and four years after Silence Is Wild she returns with her third full-length, To The Soul, gathering up constant stimuli and letting the seed of inspiration take root from them, uncontaminated. An inspiration that, as the title suggests, aims straight at the soul, at those 21 grams that are the true engine of our humanity, of our inability to remain indifferent to the power of beauty.

And beauty is found in abundance on the third full-length by the captivating Nordic artist, a beauty that takes hold of you, barely brushing you with its muffled cloak, leaving you dazed, trying to make out a shape within that velvet caress, in that instant that seems to have unveiled the secret of eternity. The piano grinds out note after note, outlining a handful of magnetic songs, whether played alone or followed by a richer, more substantial body of sound. As carefree marches and moving slow numbers alternate, often adorned with sumptuous string arrangements, the singer-songwriter manages to keep the thread of the narrative intact, ensuring a commendable listening flow despite the considerable shifts in tone.

Because To The Soul is essentially one long sequence of stories: Hyvönen has already laid her soul bare to the world, she has tucked away every fear of death in a corner, and now she can (and wants to) reinvent herself as a cunning storyteller, playing with the remarkable expressiveness of her mezzo-soprano voice. A refined taste for irony runs through every song on the record: as the skilled performer she is, our artist draws on well-established compositional conventions only to completely subvert their features, turning them into vehicles for unexpected thematic combinations. Amid surreal vignettes that slip into the macabre, and tales of social redemption, there's also room for more everyday, playful settings (mostly entrusted to the three tracks under three minutes long), as well as touching emotional ballads, yet the tension never lets up for a moment, with Hyvönen now adept at finding shreds of pure poetry even in the most mundane ordinariness.

Contributions by Vassilios Karagiannis ("To The Soul")

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