Frida Hyvönen Album: “Silence Is Wild [Digipak]”

I finally got my hands on Frida Hyvonen's "Silence is Wild" and am so glad I did. I had heard her sing some of the songs here ("My Cousin" and "Shanghai") before this album became available. Now I realize how much I have been missing. This album is Frida's best work yet.

Frida Hyvonen is no ordinary singer-songwriter. In performance she is vaguely reminiscent of Carole King. She writes songs as deep and personal as any on the folk scene, and wraps them with inventive pop stylings anchored by her rhythmic piano playing and propelled by her clear and lovely voice.

Frida's first album ("Until Death Comes") was quirky and fascinating, a summarization of her life up to that point, while the newer album deals with her life as it is now: A beautiful and uniquely talented performer plays gigs at cities around the world. Headstrong but vulnerable, she traces out an existence poised between the desire for love and an unwillingness to surrender her independence.

The album opens with "Dirty Dancing", which tells of an ex-beau who comes to clean her chimney, a neat bit of pop story-telling accented with a riff on "Unchained Melody". The next song is "The Enemy Within", a masterpiece of pop ambition and my favorite single song of this year. She follows this with the equally powerful "Highway 2 U", a bluesy, torchy meditation on love as addiction. Next up is "London!" which, like "N.Y." of her first album, is a frothy pop confection of conflicted love, where the love happens to be one of her big city venues. The album then reaches its poignant high point with "My Cousin", wherein she muses over her cousin's domestic bliss and feels compelled to act against all caution, placing herself in the position of being utterly crushed. The mood then lightens as she dumps an incompatible boyfriend in "Science", and spoofs herself in "Scandinavian Blonde" while rocking out on her piano. "December" recounts a woozy visit to an abortion clinic with uneasy comedy and a sense of sadness that makes you wonder whether the story might have ended differently if her soon-to-be-ex-lover had been more involved. The delightful "Birds" picks things up again and leads into the deliciously arch "Pony" wherein Frida relishes her domination over the horses in the stable. If only she could extend this control to the rest of her life. "Sic Transit Gloria" is a beautifully rendered melancholy vision, seizing the night while all too aware of its passing. "Oh Shanghai" is another lovely love song addressed to a city. The album closes with "Why Do You Love Me So Much" which stands in counterpoint to "My Cousin", as she attempts to fend off a too-ardent admirer. She protests "Have I by mistake been extra charming? Oh the chances are alarmingly low." Her self deprecating wit only makes her more so. How can we not love her?

I live in the Twin Cities and one night our public alt station's dj threw in Fryda Havonen's "Enemy Within" as her parting shot for the night. It's a weird haunting song and very good.

Unfortunately, all the other things by Fryda I have ever sampled are - uh - not so compelling, to be polite.

Buy the song "Enemy Within" and pass on the rest.