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HK119
One Little Indian
Things Heidi Kilpelainen doesn’t like: Consumerism. Love songs. Celebrity. Choruses with sing-a-long lyrics. Identifiable song narrative. Percussion – she’d be happy if her last days were spent with nothing more than the battery-operated lo-fi keyboard that accompanies her superfluous free-thought on songs like current single, ‘C’est La Vie.’ Comparisons to the inimitable Heidi are fruitless, but this hasn’t stopped many from trying. ‘A futuristic hybrid of Grace Jones and Debbie Harry,’ harks the Guardian. Yeah, if they met up at the dole queue and ad-libbed over a Dictaphone, perhaps. ‘Goldfrapp, Chungking, Roisin, Ladytron,’ lists PopJustice formulaically - though Heidi’s form of independent music makes all these other stalwarts look like a product of Simon Cowell. The problem of labelling I Monster protégé, Heidi, is her lack of consistency – not in quality, but in style. The entire album is an elegant foray into electronic pop, but sometimes Chicks On Speed and Sioux Sou’s post-punk dominate. With ‘Avaruusasema,’ an almost Scissor Sister jibe at musical sexuality comes across; then, with ‘Super Bug,’ a sort of white Santogold emerges amidst a sea of Casio drums – a strange concoction that sounds like Olivia Newton John tackling L.E.S Artistes. Other times spoken vocals, Marianne Faithful, fag-in-hand growling and ominous, and an overtly camp recitation, not unlike the narration of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ are what passes for song – guttural consonants rising in pitch to the point of Cabaret, teamed with strange visuals in true 80s ham-fisted operetta (‘Sucking on your veins / We could be beautiful together’). Understanding Heidi’s genius is just that – it is a piece of work you must understand, not necessarily like. Throw-away pop this is not. A robotic vocoder, retro, chanted harmonies in shrill, uncompromised squawking, and a backing track of futuro-pop (think Bowie, but anti-establishment 80s Bowie) bogged down with conceptual prose of space travel, mind control, deviant technology and modernism (hold the sighs of pretension) make for a heartbreaking work of staggering, though thoroughly trashy, genius. Heidi’s is an act that signals and celebrates the past and future of pop – whether you enjoy or not. HK
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