These days I probably mostly feature country songwriters from East Nashville, but there’s still great things happening in Finland as well. This debut full-length The Iron Door from Is This Really Me easily falls into that category. According to the press release the key to opening The Iron Door is a psycho-analytical reading of Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Kamazarov. My personal Dostoyevsky education is limited to The Idiot and Crime and Punishment, so I’m not entirely sure did I find the door key, but at least the music found a window to my heart and I’m loving this album. This Helsinki-based band takes influence from folk music of the late sixties and early seventies. I think you can hear a fair share of pop melodies just as well. There’s definitely traces of indie pop in there and maybe someone like 80s -era The Go-Betweens is lurking somewhere close by. Well no matter, if I want to call it folk or pop or folk-tinged indie pop. The thing that matter is that the album is great and extremely highly recommended.

The Iron Door just came out on the Marsu on Paras label and it’s a beautiful LP+CD combo. You can buy a copy directly from them (info is on their facebook page) or from Levykauppa Äx. Here’s a couple of examples from the album.

Is This Really Me at Facebook

Finnish soul wizard Tuomo Prättälä and americana/folk singer-songwriter Markus Nordenstreng joined forces, headed to Tuczon, Arizona and made an album with people like John Stirratt, John Convertino, Joey Burns, Jakob Valenzuela, Pat Sansone, and Gary Louris. That’s quite an all-star cast and I’m sorry for entering into this dreadful namedropping state. This namedropping of people I admire is making even me exhausted, but thankfully I can soothe my soul in the arms of a rather amazing record. It’s the music that counts and the fact that this features members of Wilco, Calexico, Autumn Defense and The Jayhawks will open a door or two, but the doorman still wouldn’t let them in, if the music itself was uninspiring and didn’t hold any value. Nothing to worry about the quality of the songs though. Everything works beautifully and the album Dead Circles contains some of the finest material these fine gentlemen have written over the years. Vanity Blinds is by far my favourite moment on this gorgeous album. Starts as a very classic Nordenstreng song that I’ve been enjoying since late nineties and rises to new heights with the gorgeous arrangements and beautiful instrumentation. A real work of art. The whole album is for the most part. Maybe a song or two feel a bit indifferent after a few spins, but that might be just me being an ignorant twat.

The album Dead Circles is out now on Grandpop Records. I highly recommend the beautiful gatefold vinyl (includes CD). There’s a couple of extra tracks too. So it’s not only the usual it looks and sounds better thing. You’ll get a little bit of extra by purchasing the vinyl.

Here’s the new music video for the song All Blue. I hope it’s perfectly ok to share this. It wasn’t on their website, but I found this from the director Paola Suhonen’s youtube and it was on their Facebook too. I’ll remove it asap, if there’s an issue.

Tuomo & Markus Website