Category: Music

{mosimage}The smartest rock band on Earth are back. Swedish The Hives know how to wear a suit on stage while make the people shake their assess with their direct rock and roll better than nobody else. I still remember their last appearance in Provinssirock, where I can admit that it was the gig I had the best time during the whole festival. After the huge success of Tyrannosaurs Hives (2004), it was about time to come back. For that, they have counted with the help of international acclaimed producer Pharrel Williams.

The band members claim that this album offers very new aspects in their music and more reflected melodies. Well, hard to believe when you go to explore the track list and get immersed in the album: songs of 3-4 minutes, straight to your head. A good dosis of rock and roll shot straight to blow your brain. But why should it be otherwise? The formula had worked before, and works again. From the starting Tick Tick Boom or the irreverent Hey Little World, you just feel like your feet cannot stop moving.

The Hives recorded good part of the album in Mississippi, and the American sound is very present all over the album. Not much time for Nordic reflective approach to music. The bass this time has a more notorious role that in previous albums, so Dr. Matt Destruction, the bass player, can feel happy about it. The Hives are back and they sound great again!

Rating 4/5

{mosimage}In his long career, Steve Earle has never played safe. Every new album adds a risky and unexpected element, either if that is the punk rock of the Supersuckers, the bluegrass of the Del McCoury band or the political protest of his previous albums Jerusalem (2002) and The Revolution Starts Now (2004).

This trend is not different with his latest release, Washington Square Serenade. Earle invited Dust Brother John King to produce the album. Yes, one of the producers behind Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique and Beck’s Odelay.

With John King behind the controls, Washington Square Serenade presents an array of contemporary sounds that collide with Earle’s traditional songwriting. Many hardcore fans might get annoyed by the samples and drum loops on top of Steve’s folkie guitar and harmonica, or the mandolins and the dobros.

But this production should not scare anyone. It’s the same old Steve Earle, anyway, and he offers a bunch of good songs whether he stays behind traditional sounds like Jericho Road  or he raps on top of drum loops like in Satellite Radio.

As usual, there is a duet with a female voice. After Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris and Stacey Earle, it was the time for Steve’s new wife, singer Allison Moorer, to be featured in the traditional duet that Earle includes in his albums.

Closing this new album is the cover that the singer did of Tom Waits’ Way Down in the Hole as the theme song of the last season of the series The Wire, where Steve Earle did a little acting too. This version fully embraces hip hop and it feels more like a bonus track that part of the beautiful poem to New York that is Washington Square Serenade as a whole.

Rating 4/5 

{mosimage}Neil Young releases the follow up of an album
that never saw the light. In 1976 in a fire at his house, the Canadian
songwriter lost the tapes of his project Chromes Dreams, an album that was
intended to include classics like Powderfinger, Like a Hurricane or Too Far
Gone. That project was lost and all those songs popped up later on in different
albums.

Chromes Dreams II does not have much to do with that project, and it
presents Neil's music wandering in different forms like acoustic ballads or
long guitar-driving epic songs.

This new album is built around an old song.
Young opens his archives and brings back Ordinary People, an 18-minute song,
recorded during the sessions of the This Note's for You in 1988. It was only
played live a dozen times at the time and since then it has been a favourite
among hardcore fans. It includes very good narrative lyrics and horns. It
reminds some of those long Dylan songs.

That’s not
the only unusually long song. No Hidden Path goes beyond 14 minutes. Not with
Crazy Horse this time, but it brings back the atmosphere of the underrated
album Sleep With Angels (1994).

But Chromes
Dreams II is an album of many different sounds, that evoke all the signatures of
the Canadian. There’s a bit of country (Beautiful Bluebird is a sweet opening),
pop (The Believer), rock (Dirty Old Man) and a surprise waltz tune with a
children’s chorus to end the album (This Way).

Even though
it might lack the wildness and the energy of a younger Young (no pun intended),
Chromes Dreams II will satisfy all the fans as it presents the most surprising
and diverse Neil Young album in many years.

Rating 4/5 

{mosimage}Half a year after
Apulanta released their new studio album: Eikä vieläkään ole edes ilta,
here comes a new double album in version digipak that includes a live concert
added to the studio version.

Great design
for this digipack version, with a second booklet where you can follow a diary
handwritten by the members of Apulanta. In the 15 songs of the live album you
can find all the ones that compose the studio album, although some of them with
a new approach, shorter and straighter to the point, trying to find a closer
contact with the audience. A contact that Apulanta usually achieves, being one
of the Finnish bands that keeps a better relation with their followers. The
connection with the fans is clear when you hear the live album, although
sometimes Toni’s vocals fail a bit, like in Karmaan Laina while other
times works pretty well like in the acoustic version of Koneeseen Kadonnut.

But the band
has enough experience to offer a good and consistent show that mixes perfectly the
raw punk rhythms of their beginnings with softer melodies. For those of you who
already bought the studio album, maybe there is not much point in pursuing this
new extended version, but for those who were not yet decided, and want to
discover Apulanta´s music, this is an excellent opportunity to experience their
direct melodies and honest attitude towards the audience. It comes indeed a bit
too soon after the release of the studio album.

Rating: 3/5

Toni and Sipe talk about Eikä vieläkään ole edes ilta.

Read the whole interview with FREE! here

Toni: The greatest thing with this album… well, with Kiila, the eight
album, was the biggest commercial success, nobody expected to be so big, and
with this one the big surprise is that …we did not write the same album again.
Of course it sounds like Apulanta, but it s at same time very different. It is
like revitalizing shot you can take. And it is great punk.


Sipe: I like the most the opening song: Viisaus ei
asu meissä.

Toni: I think that is the kick ass punk rock song. Sometimes when you
get it, you really know it, and well, when you write something, you really know
“hey this is good shit”, everything feels so right and it is great to make a
video for it. We went to Rovaniemi. We shot the video outside, in t shirts, and
it was freezing… Sipe was feeling it in the fingers for a couple of weeks. That
was a hardcore video! But it turned out absolutely great. Viisaus ei asu
meissä is the best video after 16 years. I had not been so happy about a
video like with this one.

The first single: Koneseen pudonnut is a lot better in the album.
For me it does not work as a single, I don’t know why, it does not reflect the
feeling of the album.

When we decided the first single there were only 5 songs done. Sometimes
choosing the first single is something you have to do with a limited amount of
material. I think it does not represent the album well, but I cannot complain.
The track that ends the album, Ylijäämävalumaa
is my other favourite

Sipe: And one thing in Apulanta is that we try not to have “fillers”
tracks in the album.

{mosimage}Sunrise Avenue
is one of the new Finnish bands that got quite a big international
success, especially in Germany. They present their new DVD: Live in Wonderland.

The band appeared
recently also in the news for not such a happy reason: their guitar
player and founder member Janne Kärkkäinen was fired
due to differences with the rest of the musicians, and replaced by a
new guitarist, Riku, that made possible to save the present European
tour where the band is involved.

What we have here is
the new DVD recorded on March 25th at E-Werk, Cologne. Sunrise Avenue
is a big success in Germany, so it was an excellent chance to
transmit that devotion of the German public (many female teenagers in
the first rows of the show) towards Samu Haber, the singer and
composer, and his fellows. The live DVD comes after the release of
the first album of the band: One way to Wonderland, and I must
admit that I am not very kind of bands releasing live material at
such an early stage of their careers. Even the musicians themselves
admit that they lack a larger repertoire when facing the encore. All
along the 15 tracks (plus the bonus track Diamonds) you can
see a young band that transmits a happy spirit and sunshine in the
melodies. Samu connects pretty well with the audience testing his
German language skills, but I don’t consider his vocal skills any
special. My impression towards Sunrise Avenue is that they are not so
different from many other pop-rock bands that appeared recently in
the Finnish scene (for example, labels like Fullsteam have
literally flooded the market with bands with similar style). Easy
pop-rock that can be easily swallowed by a broad teenage audience;
Same old formula. The band shows its best when they try harder riffs
and they really rock in some songs like in the introductory Choose
to be me or the final one Nasty, but the public clearly
appreciates more softer tunes like Into the Blue or Fairytale
Gone Bad.

About the technical
features, the design of the DVD main menu is quite cool, and you can
also have access to some interesting extras like images taken on the
road during the tour. Pay attention to some funny comments like when
Samu affirms that “this is a non-alcoholic tour, as usual” but
some minutes later you can see some members of the band holding
bottles of beers in their hands… Well, otherwise that would not be
a Finnish band on tour!

In any case, my
perception is that this DVD on live comes too much earlier for a band
with hardly just one studio album released. It smells too much like a
product thought by the brains in the record label to take advantage
of the present success, but they should have waited a bit more to let
the guys mature and show more experience on stage. If you are not a
fan of the band, do not waste your money on it.

Rating: 2/5

{mosimage}One of the nicest
surprises in the Finnish heavy metal scene this year: Waltari with
their new album: Release Date.

Waltari has a long
story, being formed in 1986. The band from Helsinki started singing
in Finnish, but the changed to English language in the mid 90s. What
we have here is their new album with a very suitable catchy name:
Release Date. You can find powerful metal, raw and direct,
that could remind in some moments to earlier Sepultura, like
in the theme Wish I Could Heal.

In most of the
themes background vocals play quite an important role although Kärtsy
on vocals manage pretty well, great skills showing an amazing
capacity of registers that for some moments could sound even like
Ozzy Osbourne. The band is not afraid to experiment with more
electronic sounds like in The Incarnation Party, but they do
their bests when they just simply go to make business and release a
load of good heavy metal, like in the first track: Get Stamped,
which literally will blow your minds.; for my taste, one of the best
Finnish singles of last times, or in the not much political correct
Let’s Puke Together.

The band owns what
is maybe the most important requisite in music to get success: a
personal style that is transmitted from the design of the cover to
the lyrics. It was about time to have Waltari´s Release
Date. Pretty recommendable.

Rating: 4/5

{mosimage}Despite
the fact I consider myself a fan of Matti Johannes Koivu’s work both in his
solo career and the band Ultramariini, I am probably not the right person to
review this album. No person whose age is a two-digit number is, since Topsi ja
tohtori Koirasson is an album for children.

Children’s music has often
been criticized – and for a reason – for underestimating it’s audience. That’s
not the case here – it’s actually quite surprising, how much this sounds like
Koivu’s “adult” records. Koivu and his band perform their folk-influenced pop
songs with great passion and care, like they always do. For example, the track
Räksytän could be, at least with a bit different lyric, from one of his other
albums.

What make this suitable
for kids are, indeed, the lyrics and the story, both penned by author Juha
Itkonen, and the album is actually meant to accompany the book he has made with
his wife Maija Itkonen, also entitled Topsi ja tohtori Koirasson. Juha Itkonen
has proved himself to be a very good author with his two novels aimed at the
adult audience, and the story here – about a dog afraid of the sound of buzzing
– is genuinely touching.

The story is told both in
the songs and in the narrative parts, which works very well. Taru Kivinen’s
narration empathizes beautifully the different elements of the story, and the
same goes for the musical parts. Besides Koivu’s band, the album features many
guests, of whom the most interesting must be Jarkko Martikainen in the role of
doctor Koirasson.

There are many reasons why
an adult would like to be a kid again. Topsi ja tohtori Koirasson is certainly
one of them. And any parent looking for children’s music that treats it’s
audience with respect and integrity cannot go wrong with this album.

4/5

{mosimage}Jarkko
Martikainen has maintained surprisingly good quality in his work both in his
band YUP and his solo career. Martikainen’s latest offering, a live album
consisting of songs he’s performing accompanying himself with an acoustic
guitar, is – for the most part – no exception to the rule.

He is one
of the sharpest lyricists in the current Finnish rock scene, and a very good
also at composing songs and performing them on stage. Still, it is somewhat of
a surprise that the acoustic versions of the songs work so well, since one
would think they would need the elaborate arrangements YUP and Martikainen are
famous for.

Live albums, just like
live gigs, are very much about co-operation with the audience and the
performer(s). Hyvää yötä, hyvät ihmiset is, in a refreshing way, very different
from live albums recorded in huge arenas, where you can only hear thousands of
anonymous people screaming. Here, people shout out their comments and wishes
for songs Martikainen should play, and he answers them most usually in a very
funny way. The record is very warm and intimate. People seem to be quite drunk,
but that’s the way it usually is in Finnish rock clubs.

The only drawback of the
album is that after only two solo albums, Martikainen may not have enough of
different songs for a well balanced live album. Muovailuvahaa is a previously
unreleased track, and Elegia is Timo Rautiainen cover (although the lyrics are
penned by Martikainen as well). All the other songs are from Martikainen’s two
solo albums.

This isn’t really the same
thing as seeing Jarkko Martikainen live, but live albums can rarely replace the
real thing. However, as a live album, it is different from the norm in a nice
way, and as a proof that Jarkko Martikainen is one of the most talented Finnish
songwriters, it works rather well.

3/5 

{mosimage}Bruce Springsteen’s new album Magic arrived in stores in the U.S. on Tuesday October 2nd, and Bruce and the E-Street Band kicked off their worldtour on the same day in Hartford, Connecticut (155 km from New York City).

This is the first album by Bruce and the E-Street Band since 2002’s The Rising and their first concert since the band wrapped up their historic run at Shea Stadium in New York four years ago.

The first thing that hits you as you listen to Magic is just how damn catchy the songs on the album are. Springsteen went out of his way this time to write an album with a lot of pop elements, and it shows. From You'll BeComin' Down to Livin’ In The Future, the melodies are infectious. It’s easy to picture yourself driving down the road with the top down, singing along tothe CD, watching the Girls in Their Summer Clothes walk by.

Don’t be fooled, however. A dark and unsettling undercurrent runs justbeneath the surface of this album. Neatly packaged and disguised underneath great pop melodies and hooks are feelings of uncertainty, alienation, and malaise.

Springsteen’s album The Rising dealt with the shared loss and grief felt by an America in the weeks and months following the September 11th attacks. Magic describes an America that, in the last six years since September 11th, 2001, has lost its way. The track Long Walk Home tells the tale of someonewho returns to his hometown and finds that the place he once knew isunrecognizable. The very truths and ideals that he thought were shared by everyone are gone.

The unease becomes more apparent on the title track Magic with its ominous lyrics of trickery. The song, as Springsteen mentioned during theshow in Hartford, deals with the ability of politicians and those in power tomake their own reality. Listening to Last to Die, with its blistering chorusof “Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?”, the allusions to the Iraq War arehard to dismiss.

Tuesday’s concert in Hartford centered on a trilogy of songs that thematically summed up the last six years of American history. The Rising (a song about a NYC firefighter rushing into the Twin Towers on September 11th ) segued to Last to Die which then led into Long Walk Home.

As Bruce yelled to the Hartford crowd “It’s your country, don’t let anyone take it from you”, he finished the show with American Land from his Seeger Sessions album. He reminded us all of what we should be fighting for.

{mosimage}Among all the bands in the current Finnish
music scene, Liekki is quite unlike anybody else. On this album, their fourth,
they combine elements of folk pop, progressive rock and even old school heavy
metal, and spice it up with cryptic lyrics and a somewhat nerdy image. If that
isn’t a unique and interesting concept, I don’t know what is.

Liekki
is pretty much the band of Janne Kuusela, the group’s
singer/guitarist/songwriter, although the rest of the four-piece do a very good
job each on their own field. Kuusela’s songs are full of rural mysticism, and
his lyrics, obscure and poetic, complement them beautifully. His singing and
guitar playing has also improved a lot since the early days of the band.

At
over 75 minutes, Kalliot Leikkaa is definitely too long, but then again, being
reasonable has never been one of the progressive bands’ strengths. As a whole,
one big piece of work, it doesn’t really work as well as it should, but there
are plenty of very good individual songs.

Rating 3/5

{mosimage}Jenni Vartiainen’s main claim to fame is
that she was one of the members Gimmel, a girl trio formed as the result of the
first season of the Popstars show. Like so often with winners of music-based
reality TV contests, Gimmel’s music was catchy and kitchy, but not offering any
moments of real emotion. Yes, thousands of people bought their records, but not
many of these people thought they had lost something when Gimmel, after three
albums, split up.

In
this light, it is a huge surprise that Vartiainen’s debut solo album Ihmisten Edessä (“In Front of People” in English) is not only very good, but also quite
an elegant and stylish effort. Together with producer Jukka Immonen, Vartiainen
makes music that could be described as penthouse melancholy – music that is
very cool, modern and urban on the surface level, but that ultimately is very
emotional and fragile. At times almost ambient, at times on the verge of
trip-hop, but always first and foremost pop, the album still never feels like
someone is trying to water down cool and credible styles of music.

Besides
Vartiainen herself and Immonen, the album’s list of songwriters features such
respected Finnish musicians as Knipi (Egotrippi), Kyösti Salokorpi
(Scandinavian Music Group) and female rapper Mariska. The title track is written
by Teemu Brunila of The Crash fame, and it’s actually better than anything The
Crash have released since their Melodrama album.

Of
course, it is not like anybody is reinventing pop music here, and some of the
songs could use a little more spark in them, but really: Ihmisten Edessä is one
of the most enjoyable (and pleasantly surprising) albums of this autumn.

Rating: 4/5 

{mosimage}After more
than 20 years in the business, The Cult don’t have anything to demonstrate with
their eight album. They have delivered already their top 3 albums and we
shouldn’t expect a masterpiece from them in 2007. However, this does not mean
that they cannot record very good albums. Born into This is a great one.

This new
album is also announced a back-to-basics record for the band of Ian Astbury and
Billy Duffy. Indeed, Born into This is a hard rock album. Nothing less, nothing
more. The experiments of “the goat album” (1994) or the metal sounds of Beyond
Good and Album (2001) are put aside and the band returns to the dirty hard rock
sounds of Electric (1987) and Sonic Temple (1989) with a little bit of the dark
gothic textures of Love (1984). Four-minute songs, guitar riffs

Still, it’s
2007 and fortunately the band does not repeat itself. Always, every new The
Cult album has been different from the previous ones and Born into This is not
an exception. The new songs sound fresh and current, like the single Dirty
Little Rockstar that brings a techno bass line and effects (and a riff similar
to The Rolling Stones’ Undercover of the Night) or Diamonds that uses mild
programming into the mix.

The
production excellent production and it benefits Astbury. Ian really shines and
his voice is strong as usual. Billy Duffy delivers a good amount of typical The
Cult riffs and he even allows himself to rip off the guitar riff of The Who’s
Substitute in Illuminated, which by the way, is one of the best songs of the
set. And of course, the melodies are The Cult 100%.

The only
weak moment is the crooner type of ballad Holy Mountain. It is not an inspired
moment and it breaks the strong rocking pace of the album.

This new
album is also released as a 2-cd edition, named Savage Edition and presented in
a beautiful digipack. The second cd includes two songs not included in the
album, which are outstanding and not leftovers. It also includes the demos of the
songs I Assassin and Sound of Destruction and the extended version of Savages.

Born into
This does not top classic The Cult, but it is worthy and very enjoyable. Recommended.

Rating: 4/5