Description

In a world rather overcrowded by singer-songwriters, Frida Hyvonen is a true original. The first thing that strikes you about this record is the idiosyncratic vision of its author: you notice the funny staccato stabs at the piano, which form the basis of most of the songs; the lyrics, which manage to be witty, poetic and sad, often within the same line; and you are stunned by the singing. A true female voice, comparable to - and easily the equal of - Joni Mitchell or Chan Marshall.

The picture of Frida inside the record's cover, which shows her crossing a snowy Swedish landscape, turns out tomore… be rather apt. The wintry feel of the songs - often just piano and voice - is reinforced by lyrical references to `crispy grass freezing leaves to the ground'. That desolate melancholy, which often lurks beneath the surface of Scandinavian music, is here in force: `Last night when I was out I bought myself a drink/Opened the memories and violence poured out'. And Frida has the musical abilities to back up her elegiac musings - each song is immaculately constructed, bringing to mind the great singer-songwriters of pop music's past. It's as if Mimi Parker of Low recorded a solo album and it turned out to be even better than you had imagined.

Despite the wintry theme, lyrically Until Death Comes is anything but one-dimensional. `Valerie' is a love song to another woman met during a `queer twist of time', Frida imploring her: `You re-wrote the rules... seduce me again, Valerie, oh'. In jaunty opener `I Drive My Friend', Frida is out on `the second day of June', reflecting upon the male companion who has kissed her the previous night: `love isn't it like air/you breathe it and it's everywhere'. Elsewhere, Frida, as a `serene teenaged child', is seduced by an older man who `said I had the Stuff to drive you Wild', and wittily opens `The Modern' with the line: `One day I wasn't drunk...'

Subtle humour and the Swedish taste for sex and alcohol underpin most of the album's ten songs. `Come Another Night' differs by featuring a full band arrangement, offering a Motown-esque soul pastiche along the lines of El Perro Del Mar or Antony & The Johnsons' `Fistful of Love'. It's the album's only real pop moment, a joyous horn-embellished celebration, with Frida singing `Come, come another night to me!/I feel like we belong', proving that she is a versatile songwriter who can do fun as well as anyone.

Following `Come Another Night' is the album's centrepiece ballad, `NY', a tribute to New York that wouldn't sound out of place on Joni Mitchell's Blue. A gorgeous piano melody accompanies Frida at her most emotionally vulnerable, as she sings of Christmas trees `sadly wrapped in electricity' before describing a `universe expanding out of hand/drawn towards its hollow black surroundings'. If you needed one song to convince you of her talent, `NY' is it: sublime, painfully beautiful and guaranteed to bring a lump to the throat. That she performs this trick again with album closer `Straight Thin Line' is almost too much - the record ending on the extraordinary repeated lines: `I'll outthink my flesh/the key to all my work/is in none of it/but in the absence...'

There is, at the moment, a remarkable disparity between the huge talent this record contains and the difficulty of getting hold of it for those of us outside Sweden. This is, however, set to change with Secretly Canadian's forthcoming reissue of Until Death Comes. Indeed, the choice of label may well prove to be significant for Frida. Following in the steps of fellow Swede Jens Lekman, she has joined the label that helped catapult Antony & The Johnsons far beyond the indie world into the realm of true stardom. And Frida certainly has a talent comparable to that of Antony - we wait to see if she obtains the same deserved success.

Tracks

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Info:

Category:

Music > Albums

Case Type:

CD

Release Type:

Retail

Comments:

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Cover Info:

Title:

Frida Hyvönen - Until Death Comes (2006) Retail CD

Part:

Front

Dimensions:

1261 x 1267 px

Size:

320 KB

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Report a Problem Wrong Cover Duplicate Image Bad Quality Wrong Info

27/07/09 by Leffe Hagen

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