PUNAISEN KUNINGATTAREN PERIAATE

This recently added band comes from the Northern Finnish town of Oulu. The eponymous debut features nine members (plus four guests) whose instruments are not named. I tried to list some of them on ground of their second album with a slightly altered line-up. Anyway, the sound is broad and thick with e.g. saxophone and vibes among the ordinary rock instrumentation. The female vocalist Veera Pyykkönen is not as good as Mokka Laitinen on the second album; Veera has a thinner, girlish, a bit unmature voice and associates more with commercial pop.

The cover of this album is, well, not very encouraging, and frankly pretty unsuitable to the music. Looks like some obscure group of countryside amateurs making ethnic music with a humorous, theatrical attitude. On the back cover there's a smoking chap leaning on a balcony, eyes closed from the sunlight, and a town view behind him.

'Röyttä' -- whatever the word means -- starts softly with vibes but when the vocals appear there's an edginess I don't like. 'Maa ilman lapsia' is also rather restless with a hectic rhythm and wailing saxophones and synths on top of it. This is like a bad version of ULTRA BRA (which I liked as a band), with bad songwriting and a noisy, sax-heavy arrangement. 'Majakan vartija' (= Lighthouse guard) is better: still very much in a pop mould, it at least features a nice piano pattern and some trumpet. The final song on the first side has its finer, more delicate moments. When the basic songwriting is concerned, this music has quite a little to do with prog. The prog aspect comes mostly from the diverse instrumentation.

'Talvikaupunki' (= Winter town) starting the B side seems to continue in the same restless direction, perhaps with some extra twists and complexity in details, but personally I'm starting to get tired of the thick sound. 'Syyllisyys' (= Guilt) finally brings some sense of progressive depth when Veera is silent for change, but the last part of the song featuring accordion returns to the more-of-the-same feeling.

The 10½ -minute 'Oulu' is therefor easily the album's highlight. As a prog song it could be compared to some lengthy CMX tracks, except for the saxophone. Even a VDGG association is justified. All in all, I'm afraid I have to give a two-star rating to this debut. Not because it would lack substance and musical competence, but because a) I personally don't enjoy it that much, and b) the taste of the music is clearly closer to [admittedly ambitious] pop than prog per se. The second album "Kaksi suuntaa" (2015) is MUCH better, I can tell you.