Past Event

Frida Hyvonen with Pikelet and DJ Jens Lekman

10th Feb 2010

Event Image

Presenter: Chapter Music
Website:
Event Duration: 150 minutes

Doors 8.00 PM

Performances from 8.45 PM

It's hard to put into words just how good Frida Hyvönen (pronounced Hee-Vo-Nen) is. On record, her songs cut to the core, slicing through all emotional barriers to pierce your heart and transfix it. And live, she is hypnotic, majestic, a truly arresting performer.

She may not be a household name here, but in Sweden, Frida is a chart-topping star. Her sparse, piano-pounding debut Until Death Comes emerged in 2005 on Licking Fingers, the label run by Swedish pop stars the Concretes. The following year US indie giants Secretly Canadian (home to the likes of Antony & the Johnsons and Jens Lekman) picked up the album for America, while Chapter Music also snapped it up for an Australian release.

Directly personal and magnetic, Until Death Comes received the annual Stockholm Prize for Swedish music, while locally it was a Triple R album of the week, and first single I Drive My Friend picked up high rotation on Triple J.

Follow-up Silence Is Wild came out late last year and was a sumptuous expansion, incorporating lavish arrangements of strings, synths, drums and backing vocals, with Frida's voice and songwriting soaring to new heights. It reached the Swedish top ten and earned her a whole new swathe of fans around the world.

Now, after years of gentle persuasion, Frida has agreed to play one intimate show in Melbourne in February, accompanied by percussionist Evelyn Morris (Pikelet) and backing vocalist Monica Sonand, a trained opera singer whose haunting electronic recordings have been compared to a "Casiotone Cocteau Twins".

Support comes from psychedelic folk wonder Pikelet, and DJ Jens Lekman (Sweden). Pikelet's new album Stem is due in February, and her January has been filled playing shows with the likes of Devendra Banhart, Kaki King and Patrick Watson.

This show will both inspire you and break your heart - it's truly not to be missed!

www.fridahyvonen.com
www.myspace.com/fridahyvonen

Frida sings Sonic Youth's Shadow Of A Doubt with Jenny Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u44Owx9IFHk

Frida sings Birds backstage in NYC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUJOyUNTzuc