Susanne Sundfør review – fizzing rave-pop that sounds apocalyptic

The fact that Susanne Sundfør’s Ten Love Songs topped the charts in her native Norway rather makes you want to take your hat off to the mainstream record buyers of Trondheim and Fredrikstad. No easy MOR pop for them: on Ten Love Songs, Sundfør’s radio-friendly tunes and intriguing lyrics – “nothing’s ever easy when you take ecstasy” opens Trust Me – crash against expansive mock-classical interludes, punishing industrial rhythms and vaguely proggy touches. In Britain, it’s the kind of thing that would almost automatically condemn you to critically acclaimed cult status: back home, it’s her third No 1 in a row.

Live, Sundfør’s sound is less eclectic, more concentrated and possibly even more potent. One Bach-like burst aside, the classical influences are jettisoned in favour of siting Sundfør’s voice – which soars and swoops dramatically – over distorted percussive thunder and dramatic, noir-ish synth-pop. It feels gothic rather than goth: the keyboard lines are equal parts fizzing rave-pop and the kind of thing the Phantom of the Opera knocks out when given access to a pipe organ. The drums similarly locate a midpoint between dancefloor pulse and sounding like something you’d hear shortly before the world ends.

At its most straightforward, Sundfør’s songwriting can sound a little like Lana Del Rey without the cliched affectations and invented persona, but it’s hardly ever straightforward. Sometimes the contrast between Sundfør’s pop inclinations and her more avant garde impulses are as stark as the monochrome lighting. The melodies of Accelerate and Delirious are as sparkling and commercial as anything a Scandinavian pop factory churns out, but they’re separated by lengthy electronic drones, bursts of crackling distortion like machines malfunctioning and harsh, austere rhythms: at the end of The Silicone Veil, the song is usurped by an intense passage of beats that keep suddenly short circuiting then unexpectedly jerking back into life. You’re left with music that sounds, at turns, not impossible to imagine on the Radio One playlist and not unlike Throbbing Gristle, polarities that shouldn’t work together, but that Sundfør somehow turns into a thrilling, unified whole: a pretty astonishing trick and all the evidence you need that she’s something very special.