Frida Hyvonen Silence is Wild. Again, I am late. This is much beloved. Rightly so. There are all sorts of things that are beloved, incorrectly. Why do you love the Vivian Girls?(just dreadful really) Je Suis Animal?(too meek to be drontetastic, too dronephony to be much fun), The Smittens?(pah, pure evil), the last Magnetic Fields (eh, actually no one likes that one, it seems as if his entire existence is ironic these days). Anyhow. Many now love Frida. They should all love Frida. Frida is amazing. There is a conversation on a new website from the nice people from indiemp3.com over "twee bollocks". We needn't censor bollocks on a US domain need we? It sounds cute or err...twee. The entire discussion seems stupid and pointless. Throwing punches at the air that surrounds them. Here's facts but "twee" music is indiepop, almost without exception. Not all indiepop is twee, of course, but the two categories are inextricably linked. You might have Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Crystal Stilts sharing a stage at an 'indiepop' festival but the crowd will be full of the hopelessly "twee" and to what end do we disparage this? I might reasonably fret over the balkanization of music as how many of these indiepop websites cover anything outside of things that could be rightly or wrongly categorized as "twee" pop? Not many. I vascillate but the "electronic" things I write about tend to be denigrated with the same epithet. I lament over the death of indiepop not so much in revelations in the dearth of quality music but in the crushing of the socially anarchic spirit that compelled its existence in the first place. I was not a fan of indiepop in the 80s. I was still istening to the Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen almost to eh exclusion of everything else. I know I know, everything starts with Orange Juice. But even as a pop archivist moving through history four or five years post the climax I could understand the driving force behind the music was political and reactionary. Sarah's heavy handedness aside. The unprecedented material wealth of the current generation has dampened that. Class warfare is ridiculous an serves no purpose but it fires the soul, it gives bite to every vowel and chord. Writing a lament over some contrived social malady such as gitmo, global warming or reduced arts funding is just not the same. There isn't a struggle for existence out of nothing. Indiepop has carved out a niche broad enough to be appropriately labelled as a ghetto, rich enough to support itself and to allow atrophy of thought enough to permit the eating of one's own. Anyhow, I should cheer, it's so difficult to raise the ire of an indiepop fan and real opinions are being expressed thoughtfully and without reservation. Bravo. Frida. I am on song three already. I've read other people's opinions on Frida and mostly I concur. Discussion ranges from allusions to the Cardigans to the Concretes to Motown. Accepted. But there is a real Dagwood and Blondie sense of kitsch surrealism to this. The real life stories of some mentalist construction trapped in a set of dusty journals hidden among the bleach and borax beneath the kitchen sink. Even then I do find many of the lyrics silly and humorous. Is it meant to be undiminished pain and grief? There are even parts that are not unlike Jens Lekman minus the unfunny jokes. But the performance is mighty and extraordinary. There is ripping drama and a fierceness of purpose in her singing. The playing is occasionally slight and impecunious but the overall effect when combined with the ferocity of mind is mesmerising. It isn't unprecedented. Surely not. I don't think it much resembles the exceedingly dull Concretes really, boo to you who would believe such fables. It is more reminiscent of the lineage of original thought that ran through glorious eccentrics, the Kate Bush, the Throwing Muses(though nothing about this rocks), the Jay Clarkson. Most of it is piano based. The much lauded London has begun just now. I mislaid the exclamation point. As a world traveller myself, ha, I am well qualified to comment on travelogue as pop song. Not really. I am in South Carolina. My parents allege that this is the second poorest state in the union. I haven't any numbers to confirm that assertion but as background it does add a cosmically imbalanced feeling while listening to luxuriant exhortations while walking at night with an LED flashlight searching to see if the eyes of alligators will glow the same as caymans. I've seen only one alligator and it was in the daytime. It was a baby, 3 feet or so. I wanted to take him home. My own elvis. I've been to London!. I've not yet written a song about it. I've been three times. The first was by myself, the second was with someone else and we stayed in a jail cell/hostel, and the last was by myself and I stayed in even more spartan accomodations. But I was granted sleep. This is a magnificent song, it has a huge chorus, all of these backing vocals, ambience of heartbreak, tenderness and fury. It doesn't resemble the city at all. I didn't feel the energy of London. Does it radiate for everyone? We were there on New Year's Eve, it was muted, it might have been the sight of male pattern Boon-ness experience on stage. I remember the DJ that played Blondie's version Oh Denis and midnight felt anti-climactic. Next song. Slow. Piano. Sketchbook about fictional domestic bliss, serialized. From her photo on the album cover she seems a bit esoteric and delicate with animal prints and equine accompaniment, the Freudian misinterpretations seem abundant. On the beach this week was a trotter horse towing a man in a chariot. I thought of Meissonier and the studies he made of horses and their mode of running and then I walked over and marveled at the pattern of footprints on the beach. Must one train a horse to become a trotter or are their born trotters? These things one must know before one can write a brilliant novel or even a stark heart revealing record such as this. Next song. More piano, her untreated voice, so forceful and intense. Alistair Fitchett claims this as his favorite record of the year. I've already claimed mine as Cocoanut Groove but I could have been mistaken. This is splendid. Is it an innate tendency towards the kooky female aesthetic? I feel so cliche at having posted a fanboy video of Zooey Deschanel on the website. I like that song, loads, but she's so so beautiful. So so. Alistair Fitchett, i do seem to mention him all of the time, has posted a beautiful photo of Rose Pipette on his website and it doesn't do it for me. She's stunning but she seems so pedestrian in comparison, with the accompanying baggage. All she needs is a horse and a lemur. I have listened to her new songs, blah. Next song. This is a bit bouncy, a bit Linda Ronstadt, Excellent. Scandinavian Blonde. Big band melodramatics and boogie woogie good time rock and roll. I am leaving for home tomorrow. I miss home. I have enjoyed this time in my parents new home more than on any previous visit. I don't have demons of regret and inaction here. i come here and I spend all of my days at the beach where I walk up and down and fly kites, and I reel in kites, and later I attach squid to kites and I fly squid laden kites near to rats with wings attempting to entice them to organize and attack. Failure. I could have attempted to seduce the turkey buzzards near the golf course instead. Later there were small Asian boys with RC cars and thoughts arose of affixing the squid to RC cars while harassing the shore bound seabirds. Or later of surreptitiously disguising the children as bait themselves, squid in the right sock, a dollop in the breast pocket, one behind the ear. But then came flashes of the real world, squirrely chest hair, obesity and a line of ocean tankers in the near offshore waiting to unload some precious oriental cargo. In the beach were carvings of love, Reed loves Missy, I Love Amanda. I tried my hand. I love Turkish Filbert, I love Veronica Lake and I love Saag Paneer. My false cleverness could not surmount the beach worn apathy of passersby. My sandmanship was not impressive. Another quiet song at the moment, very Hips and Makers. Perhaps if Tanya Donnelly had made Hips and Makers it would have sounded a bit like this. Who knows, it could have sounded like Love Songs for Underdogs. Fuzzy warpings on cellos? Warbling over birds. I just had my bit on birds, poor timing. In the Christmas issue of the Economist (oh how I love the Christmas issue of the Economist) there is a lament for the avian plight in China. It's a tragic end for certain. Frida could be writing an affidavit in the indictment against the communist oppressors. Not likely. It's poetic and marvelous and lovely. I need a new thesaurus. Twinkles. Such majesty. Kate Bush might have written of this when she was still barren and bereft. Now this would have turned on axes of babies and baby's toenails. Next song. Soundtrack for my checking the weather forecast all along my route of travel. I am forced to fly first to Charlotte, to Pittsburgh and then to Denver. It is meant to be filled with robust breezes and unseasonably warm daytime highs on my early evening arrival. Will there be parades? Nice. i could dream of days when the earth's motion stills and leap seconds shed from moon rays and the horses that escape from story boarded lucid dreams. Does Frida write during sol de medianoche? What an odd shift of being it must be, unless attuned to it from birth's diurnal course. Perhaps dramatic moments are presaged byLovers of the Arctic Circle on continuous loop during the dream journal recordings. There are distracted persuasions in the background on this startling song. Stately violins as soundtrack, dancing keys and the undergirded main melody to caress her voice. It's lush. Do scratch the earlier bits about impecunity of style, there is grace and joy and passion imbued in all of the colors at the surface and deeper within. A march, this delightful coda, a tender farewell. Beautiful. I've found the first record. Is it as wonderful? I listened to the first RockettotheSky record and it didn't captivate as much as Medea. This rests snugly alongside Medea. Is it Kate Bush's renewed activity that has drawn these lovely young women towards her legacy. Kate Bush had an otherworldly grasp of the literary when it was protagonist grappling with her internal conflagrations whereas this is purely livejournal posturing made elegant by sheen of sophistication of presentation and of polish. It's awe filled and it is harrowing in practice. Impressionable young things will mine the lyrics for touchstones to compensate for their own shortcomings but you needn't. The words are heartfelt and staggeringly abundant but they serve texture as well as narrative. It's all seemingly a missive against passive existence. Inspiring is understating it by way of insult. Big finish, chorus of voices, yodel-y vocals and splashes of percussion and the twinkles to transcend consciousness of the ether surrounding the perineum. Not even the formica can dull the feral sense. Last song. Why Do You Love Me So Much? A question for the insecure. A question I have asked myself and then come the lists, the let me count the ways, tiresome and 'my love is nothing like the sun'. Album of the year?