Frida Hyvönen

The Swedish songster tells us about the Nordic indie scene, poodles, and laughing until you cry

By Emily Anderson
Published: February 20th, 2007 | 6:29pm

Frida Hyvönen's debut CD, Until Death Comes, was released on Secretly Canadian last October. Her songs are haunting, piano-driven meditations on the exotic locales you long for and the people who never really understood you. A mixed bag of hindsight, reverie, and melancholy, Until Death Comes is a Tapestries for the Euro-tripping hipster set. After a successful tour with Jens Lekman over the summer, the Nordic wunderkind is coming back to the United States to tour with Swedish experimentalists Under Byen. Here she sits down with Venus Zine and provides us with some insight into her work and the Swedish indie scene.

A lot of people have compared you to other confessionalist singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Laura Nyro. When did you write the songs on Until Death Comes, and what might have been happening in your life that influenced these songs?
The songs on Until Death Comes were written over a few years, approximately 2000-2005. They were the ones surviving through the very strict censorship rules I apply. I wouldn't call my lyrics confessionalist. Although I've sometimes used things that happened to me, or another person. Djuna is an alias for a friend of mine. She took it from Djuna Barnes. Oh, isn't it great when you take on another name because it lifts you! I hung out with my godchild and her sister the other day, and when they played they called themselves Frida and Alexandra (which is the name of their mother).

Tell us about your musical background.
I liked singing and had a sense of melody all my life. The piano was the easiest way of accompanying my singing. In my family music was always present, more in the form of playing and singing than listening to records. My grandmother, for example, was a singer and played the cittra at church meetings. I studied classical singing when I was a teenager. After school I started experimenting with electronical music. Then, at some point, the song-piano thing took me over, and that's what I've been doing for the last five or six years.

This US tour with Under Byen is your second within a year. How many times have you been to the states thus far?
As a musician - thrice.

You're also very involved with dance. Tell me a little about the work you do with these dance troupes, and your plans to release the music you wrote for them.
I just released the first part of my experimental series Frida Hyvönen Gives You: which is the music from a dance performance called Pudel. We are on tour right now actually, but originally we made the piece in the fall of 2005. The choreographer, Dorte Olessen, and I worked side by side, making the performance and the music happen. I participated in the dance practice every day, and then in the evenings and mornings I composed the music. In the show I perform it live on stage with voice, piano, and an electrical organ. There are also three dancers, one boy, one photographer, five poodles, and their owners.

Last summer I took some of the songs and recorded them with new arrangements for a small orchestra, which became Frida Hyvönen Gives You: Music From The Dance Performance PUDEL. I might continue working with some of the Pudel-people again. I like the way dance affects my work.

As for the Frida Hyvönen Gives You: series, I have some other collaborations happening later this year. Can't tell you yet but soon.

I read on your website that you've been without a permanent residence for some time, is this still true?
Yes...I've been without a home for a year. I've been traveling and playing a lot, so I didn't think I needed one. But! I just bought a house, the other week. It's in a small village. I'll move there in the summer, after the tours.

Tell me a little about Under Byen and your connection to other Swedish/Scandinavian artists like Jens Lekman, etc. Are any of these musicians at the top of the charts in Sweden?
In Sweden, you don't hear a lot of popular music from the other Scandinavian countries. But I'm friends with Swedish artists, like Marit Bergman, David Sandström, Jenny Wilson, Jens Lekman, Sahara Hotnights, and José Gonzalez. Everyone is on the charts now and then. I think the mainstream/indie gap in Sweden might be smaller or at least look different than in the United States.

Where are the strong music scenes in Sweden and how do you define your role within or outside of them?
I'm most likely usually mentioned as part of either of these three: The Norrland Scene, which is the part of Sweden where I grew up. Other people in that scene are Kids of the Ranch, David Sandström, Kajsa Sandström, Ida Linde, Frida Selander. Then there's the Women's Scene. There I'm grouped together with anyone who is a woman and a musician: Marit Bergman, Stina Nordenstam, Monica Zetterlund, Anna Ternheim, Laleh, Ane Brun, El Perro Del Mar. Then there's the Stockholm-more-or-less-experimental-indie-scene, which I'm part of through Licking Fingers and Slottet labels, and the people around the club Ugglan. The Concretes, Dräpenhund, the Tiny, Santa Maria, Mats Gustavsson, Peter Bjorn & John.

But at heart I see myself having my own scene, a carefully selected blend of all these, or none. I come and go as a cat, who lives in a one-cat-castle some considerable distance away.

Your music sometimes communicates strong feelings of aimlessness or disassociation, and a general sense of feeling lost even in places that should be familiar. In all your travels, where have you felt the most at home?
I've felt most at home in beautiful churches and castles, behind good pianos, and in conversations. Or perhaps when I've met someone who shared the same sense of humour. You laugh until you fall and cry, and you feel at peace.

Listen to Frida Hyvönen: "You Never Got Me Right"