Paavoharju
Laulu laakson kukista
Fonal Records
Listening to "Laulu laakson kukista", it's easy to hear where everyone gets the "freak" and "psych" to prefix Paavoharju's inscrutable blend of folk. It's hardly consistent—perhaps one of the reasons that they remain on the folk margins is their uneven, genre-hopping approach to LPs, where they give almost as much time to circus music larceny as they do to their fuzz-folk-meets-trip hop explorations.
The appearance of waltz time is perhaps the only thematic glue that binds the disparate ends on "Kukista". These waltzes work better when they rummage around in a fog of electronica, while darkly angelic female vocalists swarm as sirens around come-and-go drums. Attempts at a more straightforward approach like "Italialaisella laivalla" mostly fail to impress -- the melodies too woodsy, their signature ethereal errata too lacking.
It's beat-driven songs like "Uskallan" with its broad, almost proto-Slavic melody that get the job done when neither the siren's song or the sea of low-tech ambience can be found. These latter qualities, prominent in "Kevatrumpu", "Kirkonvaki", and "Tytto tanssii" are starkly beautiful highlights -- better than anything I've heard all year -- but Paavoharju has trouble finding enough "Uskallan" moments to lift the rest of the album out of the water.
I guess Paavoharju is just hard to understand. Maybe it's the fact that I don't know a word of Finnish, or maybe it's the fact that their self-proclaimed mystic Christian asceticism is supposed to inspire visions of 16th-century Byzantium that I just don't get. But all of this confusion never subtracts from the weird beauty of most of this album. It remains impressive and stunning, and its arcane nature rewards with repeat listens.
- Nathan Keegan
