Question: how does a Russian-born music journalist start an interview with a Nordic siren without mentioning the long-familiar cold weather uniting two European countries? Answer: he instead mentions he had previously spoken to her friend – in the My Shoes Will Lead Me Forward author’s case, the amazing Frida Hyvönen (who profoundly told me she loved Jenny – "She’s my sister!"). It’s Hee-voh-nen for the record – of course I got the pronunciation wrong…

"She’s a great person and I think we’re secretly in love with each other," mother-of-two Jenny laughs. I didn’t think it was that serious … "No, but I love her lyrics and … I like her! She’s brilliant."

No lyrical slouch herself, Jenny has shifted from debut record Love And Youth’s quirky, romantic piano-pop to considerably more serious themes and naked emotion dominating her sophomore effort Hardships! – practically mirroring human life’s progression.

"I like to work for myself and for my life, but I also write down feelings," she says. "Feelings are always true and I always try to write them up into stories – especially if they are my feelings – but they’re not my diary, they’re… my poems, if you know what I mean."

On the music side of things, Hardships! is peppered with syncopated piano lines, busy "urban" beats and R&B-inspired multilayered vocals, presenting an even more drastic change in Jenny’s sound but avoiding the synthetic, detached gloss.

"I was thinking about modern R&B but I wanted to sound more… salty and raw," she claims. "I took the components and transformed them into quite rough handclaps and footstomps – more earthy, in some way."

Claps, stomping and raw fervour – and just how many genres came out of the Southern gospel? A discussion about early R&B (as in the ‘60s "rhythm and blues") and young Tina Turner ensues before Jenny drops the name of a late, great artist who along with Ray Charles invented the whole concept back in the late ‘50s, and then immediately forwards nearly fifty years to re-establish the topic.

"I guess what I kept in mind was early Nina Simone, but I was also listening to modern music like Destiny’s Child and Missy Elliott, the kind of catchy R&B style," she recalls.

"I love Nina so much – every song she took, she made her own."

Having recorded and produced the album in her own Gold Medal studio in Stockholm, the ever-enigmatic Jenny precedes revealing her favourite songs from Hardships! by a rather categorical declaration.

"Umm, it depends – I mean, I don’t listen to the album anymore," she chuckles. "I did when it was ready, but when you finish the album, you don’t listen to it ever again; now, when I think about my songs, I think about the emotions of the songs – for example, I really love The Wooden Chair (a heart-tugging tale of pregnancy and motherhood) but I also love all the others; I don’t listen to the album though – I’m done with it! It’s quite a strange feeling, actually – it took me a year and a half to make the record and now it’s more important for me to perform music and establish comfort as it’s all got to transform and develop; the music stays alive but the album … belongs to someone else now."

HARDSHIPS! is out now through Gold Medal/Universal. www.myspace.com/goldmedalrecordings / www.jennywilson.net

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