U-Bahn’s second-ever live show outside their home country Australia took place in Aalborg, in Jutland, in the north of Denmark. They were in this congenial, routinely rain-sodden city last weekend for Northern Winter Beat, the annual festival of established, offbeat and up-and-coming musical adventurers.

Not everyone who flocked to Day Two's evening concert in Kings Place's year-long Nature Unwrapped: Sounds of Life celebrations will have realised that they were catching parts two and three of a trilogy.

The first feature by Copenhagen-born director Ulaa Salim dives boldly into a cauldron of hot-button issues – terrorism, racism, nationalism and fascism. It’s set in 2025, in a Denmark suffering from bomb attacks and violently polarised politics. This climate has spawned the titular Sons of Denmark.

The English-language drama Holiday, Danish filmmaker Isabella Eklöf’s feature debut, is an anthropological study of the corrosive effects of absolute male power and calcified misogyny.

How close should a biographer come to her subject? Clare Carlisle stays by the side, and looks through the eyes, of Søren Kierkegaard at almost every step on his maverick journey. Philosopher of the Heart even closes with a glimpse of Carlisle in tears at a bicentenary celebration for Kierkegaard at the Danish Church in London.

It’s another night in an emergency services dispatch room in Copenhagen. Policeman Asger Holm has been taken off active patrol pending a conduct investigation and is stuck on the phones. Drunks, druggies, posh blokes complaining of being mugged in the red light district, he’s pretty brutal with these time-wasters. Then a call comes in from a desperate woman.

Mahler: Symphony No 6 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)

Apparently in Denmark they pronounce screenwriter Adam Price’s surname as “Preece”, but its English-looking spelling stems from the fact that his ancestors moved from London to Denmark in the 18^th century.

With the London Symphony Orchestra often playing like some commanding and relentless force of nature, Sir Simon Rattle steered two mighty avalanches of Nordic sound into a concert of granitic authority last night. However, I suspect that many people will have left a packed Barbican thinking most of the uncanny winter wonderland that separated these two mountainous symphonies.

Think of Karen "MØ" Andersen and you may well picture one of her smash hit videos. "Lean On", for instance, where the singer gyrates to a Bollywood/ house mashup. Or "Kamikaze" set in post-apocalyptic Ukraine. Yet, for all the Zeitgeist-y imagery what really made those songs so popular was really just simple youthful exuberance. "Forever Neverland" sounds like it should offer much of the same. Instead, it feels curiously grown-up.

MØ, it would seem, has moved in from her recent incarnation as the singer of Diplo pop songs. Diplo - the producer responsible for both "Lean On" and "Kamikaze" - only appears, here, on one song, "Sun in Our Eyes", a sweet slice of Balearic electro-pop. Still, his influence isn't entirely absent. Rather MØ has absorbed some of the superstar DJ's mojo, and mixed it with some Danish quirkiness.

The results feature some real nuggets. Top of the pile are "Mercy" and "Blur" both of which hark back to MØ's indie roots. The former is a particular gem -  a slow-burning torch song that finds the singer at the peak of her vocal prowess. The elasticity of her voice, and her dynamic range is on a par with technical mistresses like Sia and Adele. "Blur" is much grungier with Graham Coxon-style acoustic guitars, and a languid melody.

MØ's voice also shines through on many of the electronic numbers. The best are the least self-conscious. "Beautiful Wreck" has a catchy electro-pop vibe, featuring a cool bass vocoder effect. "Red Wine" couldn't come as more of a contrast. Its Ace-of-Base-reggae-style is so wilfully uncool it's hard not to love it.

It's only where the album starts to take itself too seriously that things begin to drag. "It's All Over" featuring the usually irrepressible Charli XCX, sounds strangely po-faced. There are also a handful of tracks, such as "I Want You", where slick production seems to have been favoured over quality tunes. Of course, you have to admire MØ's decision not to include earlier hit singles initially intended for the LP in the finished version. But it makes the quality a little uneven. Then again, who still listens to albums all the way through, anyway? There's more than enough material here to confirm the Danish singer as not only one of the most interesting artists of her generation but also one of the best singers.

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@russcoffey

Overleaf: MØ's lyric video for "Blur"