It’s strange trying to pen thoughts on music written in an unknown language. Unlike a great deal of her fellow Scandinavians – and there are many around in the British music consciousness at the moment – Siri Nilsen, Norwegian singer/songwriter on the cusp of bringing her second album Alle Snakker Sant to this country, has not bent to the will of the British record buying public in terms of our language preferences. Instead she sings everything (on this album at least) in her native Norwegian.

Listening to ‘Stille Vann’, it is temping to scribble “reflective” and “mournful”, but it’s perfectly possible that Nilsen is actually singing about how luxurious the cornflakes she had that morning are: I have no idea. Of course, a quick click onto Google Translate and we can dispel the cornflakes theory, but an electronically calculated translation is never going to allow us to grasp the full extent of what she’s singing about, so there’s little point typing out whole songs, even if we could work out how the words are spelt.

It’s somehow refreshing, though, not knowing what it is Nilsen is literally singing about. It’s possible, for one thing, to project onto the songs whatever you want to, if you’re inclined that way. But these songs can also be enjoyed simply as something beautiful on the ear – the intended meaning unimportant. The familiar inflections of the Nordic language, similar to Swedish, seem to fit perfectly with the shape of the songs too, in a way I’m not sure would work were she singing in the ubiquitous English.

Whatever she is singing about, Nilsen’s voice is clear and pure, and mainly serves as the focus of the songs. Layers on layers of harmonies float around ‘Alle Snakker Sant’, the album’s title track, and ‘Hodet, Hjertet Eller Magen’, where her voice is at its darkest: menacing-sounding compared to the sweetness of the opening song ‘Brev’, where she’s bordering on saccharine. The voice is certainly a versatile one though. In the album’s darker moments, Nilsen sounds something like a rather more cheerful Regina Spektor, but with those language inflections which make it feel as if we might have fallen unwittingly into an Ingmar Bergman film where things will, at any second, descend into Scandinavian bizarreness.

For the majority of the first half of the album though, the songs feel beautifully optimistic, although even early on, if you listen a little harder, hints of the melancholy creep though. Fast, repetitive piano or finger-picked guitar accompanies the enthralling vocals, and the songs are propelled satisfyingly forward by clicked and clapped percussion over soft acoustic drums.

The suddenly sparse moments in ‘Kort Evighet’ reveal a rawer feel hidden not far below the surface however, and nearer the end of the album the songs start to fade in mood. It’s almost as if Nilsen has used up all her energy being so sumptuously sweet in the first few songs, and slowly becomes more forlorn, so that by the time we get to ‘Jeg Vet’, the penultimate track, she’s too tired to keep up the pretence of optimism, and is fading further into slow self reflection. Moments of the song almost sound Adele-ian in her vocals, as if she’s reaching out to us in sadness like in the break-up ballads of pop’s favourite soulful songstress. Last song ‘Stille Vann’ brings the mood down still further, before finishing the album abruptly with a note of desolation.

Essentially then, Alle Snakker Sant is an album all about a voice, and a lovely voice it is too. No matter what it’s singing, desolate and pained or hopeful and sanguine, the songs are beautiful and easy on the ears but with enough dark underpinnings and pulsing weird instrumentation to maintain interest. Not an album that will be to everyone’s taste, for sure, but one that, given a little time, some might just fall into Norwegian love with.