HYVÖNEN, FRIDA
SILENCE IS WILD (SECRETLY CANADIAN)
Having come out of a year of isolation, Frida Hyvönen paired up once again with Swedish producer Jari Haapalainen in Stockholm's famous Atlantis studio and made her second full-length Silence Is Wild - due November 4th, 2008 on Secretly Canadian.Whereas Hyvönen's 2006 debut Until Death Comes was lean and percussive with her distinctive oompah-styled piano and direct lyrics, Silence Is Wild stretches her voice across lush arrangements of piano, strings, choirs, and synths.
Piano-based antecedents and contemporaries such as Carole King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Plush, and Antony and the Johnsons generally feel like appropriate touchstones for discussing the Swedish singer-songwriter's recorded work.
Lyrically, however, Hyvönen is in more open waters, as she forges her own stylistic path as a songwriter.
On Silence is Wild, Hyvönen continues to take an utterly modern approach to classic songwriting forms: blending the confessional with the fictional; mixing wit with a sexuality that shifts from the refined to the raw; all the while using language which dances effortlessly between the timeless and the contemporary, referencing high art and pop culture in a transcendent manner which masterfully put Hyvönen at the top of a new international class of singer-songwriters.