Silent Treatment is the second album from Norwegian five-piece, Highasakite. Singer Ingrid Helene Havik describes it as a romantic album, though it’s not exactly rom-com material and has a savage undercurrent of violence. For example, she gets lifted by her hair and dragged down the stairs in Leaving No Traces, but the title alone suggests that the abuse is psychological rather than physical.
Elsewhere, she takes on the role of attacker, posing as a confrontational terrorist in I, The Hand Grenade, after which she struts her stuff as a dragon-slaying super-villain on Darth Vadar. At times, the lyrics are extreme (sometimes odd, occasionally a little clunky) and the indie-pop music so spacious and sweeping that it’s difficult to grasp what is really happening behind the approachable pop facade.
Early in the album, it’s impossible to ignore the instant gratification of catchy pop anthems Leaving No Traces and Since Last Wednesday, though the softer, more personal ballads engage just as effectively, from the spare, piano-led opening of Lover, Where Do You Live? to the Cocteau Twins-like climax of Science & Blood Tests. Ambiguity about victims and victors aside, this is catchy, multi-layered music that deserves to drift well out of its Norwegian hideaway to a wider radar.
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
Best Track: Leaving No Traces
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: Wounded Rhymes LYKKE LI, My Head Is An Animal OF MONSTERS AND MEN
In A Word: Norse-code
