Pitchfork

Sometimes simple works best. With "I Drive My Friend", from her Secretly Canadian-released U.S. debut Until Death Comes, Swedish singer-songwriter, Jens Lekman tourmate, and Concretes chum Frida Hyvönen relates a fairly simple sentiment (bliss that's settled into contentment) surrounding a fairly simple event (parting ways with a lover) by way of a fairly simple tune (basically a one-two piano ditty).

Yet hidden in the furrows of all that cantering simplicity is a richly sincere ode to separation that might just intimate sorrows to come, as Hyvönen closes each verse by extending the phrase "your return" into "turn turn turn, turn turn turn." "The sun is shining/ I have everything/ A driver's license, a car, and a song to sing," she concludes, this time repeating the word "sing." Is she being playful, or has the word become a desperate self-command, leaving one to wonder what happens when the singing stops? Maybe it's not so simple after all.

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#0049 > Frida Hyvönen: "I Drive My Friend"
[from Until Death Comes; Secretly Canadian]
Info: [Frida Hyvönen] | [MySpace] | [Secretly Canadian]

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// Previously on The Infinite Mixtape:
#0048: Turbulence: "Notorious"
#0047: I'm From Barcelona: "We're From Barcelona"
#0046: Christopher Willits: "Colors Shifting"
#0045: Giddy Motors: "Panzrama"
#0044: Bound Stems: "Western Biographic"
#0043: Tim Hecker: "Chimeras"
#0042: Working for a Nuclear Free City: "Troubled Son"
#0041: Fujiya & Miyagi: "Collarbone"
#0000: All Previous Infinite Mixtape Entries