This Norwegian newcomer seems set to divide opinion as sharply as the harp-playing Joanna Newsom did with her own debut last year. No album that lists pots, pans, a plastic bottle, eggs and bicycle spokes among its instruments is going to be straightforward, and, on the surface, Little Things is determinedly eccentric. Hukkelberg's lyrics toy with both the exciting and the stifling aspects of romantic surrender and self-absorbed solitude. Musically, the songs subvert themselves, one minute an Aja-like West Coast jazz breeze or a syncopated Mitteleurop tango, the next an interwar Hollywood musical or a lap steel-guitar interjection redolent of SpongeBob SquarePants. Vocally, again like Newsom, Hukkelberg pushes and provokes, blurring the line between felicity and ugliness, coaxing high emotion at either extreme. Maybe it should bear a warning sticker - "Listeners of a hidebound disposition should cover their ears now" - but Little Things demands to be heard and cherished for its audacious beauty.
Leaf Bay