When listening to Hanne Hukkelberg’s Little Things and Rykestrasse 68, it is tough to fathom how the Norwegian songstress pulls off these songs live. Both albums are filled with found sounds; kitchen appliances, bicycle spokes, wire brushes, even rain. This creates careful, meticulously constructed melodies, so fluid that without some sort of robot or a shitload of sampling, Hukkelberg would be out of luck live. I was wrong. In front of a packed house in the Paradiso’s upstairs party room at 7pm on a balmy Saturday, Hukkelberg not only pulled off reconstructing each blip, bleep, found sound and tone scratch in the flesh, but her interpretations sounded sweeter than the recorded versions, leaving each attendee awestruck. Simply awestruck.
To her credit, she did have a bicycle on stage. The rest, however, was constructed using ingenious handiwork and masterful multi-instrumentation. I stopped counting at ten the instruments that Hukkelberg and her quartet of accompanying musicians ran through: accordion, mini-harp, the bike, glockenspiel, lap-steel guitar, flute, tuba, typewriter and the usual suspects, guitar, bass and trap kit. Hukkelberg surrounded herself with a who’s who of instruments. Anything used on the album, minus the rain, was present. Yet, an atmosphere of muddiness, due to overcrowding the sound with instruments, never happened. Instead, Hukkelberg and her band picked each move wisely, using each moment to reflect and enhance a wiry, omniscient mood that fluttered through each song, rather than constantly build up, up and up to a needless climax. As a result, Hukkelberg spun out a sumptuously creative blend of whimsical folk, airy pop and bubbly jazz that emoted expansively, taking just as much from the open ethereality surrounding Norway’s countryside as the hustle and bustle of city centre to staple and tape together all these beautiful sounds.
From the creatively titled Rykestrasse 68, which is the address in Berlin where her new album was recorded, Hukkelberg ran through ‘The North Wind’, a calculated romp of acid jazz, Mugison-infused quirky prodding bursting Balkan undertones with ‘Ticking Bomb’, the most intense, loud and climactic song tested. From Little Things, Hukkelberg selected ‘Balloon’ and the soft, sensual ‘Words and a Piece of Paper’, among others. Yet, no matter which song, Hukkelberg’s control of her sound and the sheer eccentricity of its origins enraptured each pair of ears (and eyes). It was so damn interesting to watch, as if Hukkelberg was building the set to a sort of interpretive theatre, one scaffold at a time with each chord progression. While one take featured a tuba playing the bass line over a plucked thumb harp melody and atmospheric lap-steel accompaniment, another was just her and her piano, singing as if life depended on it while a typewriter counted down in quarter notes towards the end of the world. Each song was baffling, creative, perplexing and ingenious, from a sparse, free-jazz cover of The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’ as an encore to a ghostly tribute to her adopted geographic muse, ‘Berlin’ and lead single ‘A Cheater’s Armoury’, which combined swing jazz with Norwegian anti-pop, without being too coagulated to dance to.
No matter how complex Hukkelberg’s found sound simplicity was to pull off, not one note overshadowed the whimsical bellow of her voice, which was as cute as it was intimidating. With a range akin to Feist or Hafdis Huld, Hukkelberg accented each fluttering melody as if they were identical twins, born to fit together. Sometimes in English, sometimes in Norwegian and sometimes in her own little world, Hukkelberg sang dominantly, asserting herself as primary vehicle of the outfit, both in tense and tone. Wherever she went, the band followed; beautifully I must add. I cannot recall if I have ever seen a singer feel so at home in between a bustling accordion, a spinning bicycle rubbing salaciously up against a sharpened stick and a foreboding tuba. It all fit, much like the appliances and rainy days did when Hukkelberg pressed record and listened.
Afterwards, I felt windswept, exhausted and thoroughly satisfied. Without using samples, Hukkelberg organically crafted each odd, crafty bit of sound squeaking from each of her records, and with her voice as anchor, made each song sweeter than it already was. This hour-long Norwegian date, filled with whimsy, questions, answers and beautiful noise, was exactly the sonic sugar rush needed to begin Saturday night in form, as it ignited my mind, made me smile like I was trying to break my cheekbones and ended way, way too early. The sun was still out when I left.
