Featured, Finnish music, Headline, News

The Lieblings – Take Us To Your Leader

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This makes me incredibly happy. The debut album by The Lieblings is now in stores and ready to cause a joyful havoc in your head, heart and bellybutton. This thing is called Take Us To Your Leader and it came out on GAEA Records on the 23rd of august. I’m really loving this one, but I suppose it’s no surprise. If you wanted to make a target audience for this album, I would be there on the first row. Powerful, energetic pop music, 90s power pop, fuzzy guitars, great singing, catchy-as-hell songs. I became an obsessive music fan because of music like this. Of course my taste has expanded into many different directions since that, but before power pop, the chart albums were basicly enough. A lot of beautiful noise in form of a melodic pop song. The sweetest and the most joyful form of art. And now we have a brand new album full of wonderful, energetic and blissfully fuzzy power pop.

The Lieblings are Sam Shingler, Andy J. Prinkkilä, Coma Silvennoinen and Katja Tolonen. Because of some unknown reason, I somehow assumed that this was Sam’s new band (in a sense that’s he is the only songwriter and the front man of the band). Therefore it was pleasant surprise to notice that all members write songs and sing on the album. But don’t get me wrong. I was damn excited even at the time when I thought this was Sam’s band . I’m a fan of both Montevideo and The Pansies and have enjoyed pretty much everything I’ve heard from him. It’s just that Andy and Coma are from The Sugarrush, which is pretty much the dearest band in the world to me (a tie with Bridget). That’s why I was thrilled to notice that they play equally important role as Sam and Katja. Some of this stuff is actually quite close to The Sugarrush. It almost feels like Coma is stealing a bit from his own The Sugarrush song on She Motorway, but I think that’s allowed (and it might be some unreleased The Sugarrush song). Anyway, Take Us To Your Leader is a wonderful noisy pop record. Monstrously highly recommended. This is the debut single It’s All Gonna Fall.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOzbEIVc0ok]

The Lieblings Website

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Finnish music, International music, News

Marine Dreams, Vikesh Kapoor, Mirel Wagner & Chris Picco

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Some great songs that I’ve formed a relationship with.

marinedreams

First we have Canadian Marine Dreams and Roots Come After Lengthy Waits from their upcoming album Corner Of the Eye. I don’t know much about Marine Dreams or Ian Kehoe, the man behind Marine Dreams, but after listening this awesome dreamy song a few dozen times during the past three days, I’m more than keen to find out more and hear the whole album (it will come out on the You’ve Changed Records in september). This is Roots Come After Lengthy Waits.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/105321567″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
 
Marine Dreams at Facebook

vikesh

Singer-songwriter Vikesh Kapoor is a new signing by the excellent Portland-based label Mama Bird Recording Company. Last year they released excellent albums by Barna Howard (#2 on my albums of the year list) and Denver (#16 on my albums of the year list). Therefore I’m pretty much a fan of the label and interested about everything they release. It looks like they won’t let me down this time either and continue to sign only great songwriters. Vikesh Kapoor’s concept album The Ballad Of Willy Robbins will hit the stores and our hearts on October 15th. If the rest of it is as good as this first outtake I Dreamt Blues, it’s going to be a special album.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/101771051″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
 
Vikesh Kapoor Website

mirellove

Moving on to Finland. I still haven’t posted the new Mirel Wagner song Is This What Love Looks Like that came out few months ago. That’s just criminal, because this is again wonderful. Is This What Love Looks Like is a stream only single released in support of a help line for women suffering from violence within their partnerships.

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Mirel Wagner Website

chrispicco

Let’s move back to Canada and close this post with something fairly simple, but everlastingly beautiful. Chris Picco’s album The Beach has gotten quite a lot of air time on my iPod during the past month or so. It contains some songs that I absolutely love, like The Good Within and In Your Light, but also a couple of songs I don’t like at all (especially Real Estate Men). So fair to say I do have a bit mixed feelings about it. Mostly a great record though that fills my heart with warmness. This is In Your Light.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/93361769″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
 
Chris Picco at Facebook

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Finnish music, Headline, News

Is This Really Me – Boxer 7″

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isthisreallyme

Some major news. Pretty much the coolest label/collective Marsu on paras returns to this ball game and release a new vinyl single. The single in question is the debut release of a band called Is This Really Me. The band consists of Panu Artemjeff, Hitomi Tabuchi, Mikko Hynninen, Petri Nakari, Hannu Linkola and Yohei Ono. So even though the band is quite new, you’ll find some usual suspects from the line-up. Petri and Hannu are new recruits and don’t appear on this debut release. I’m especially fond of the lighter b-side Ordinary Things that ticks all the right boxes I can come up with. Listen to the whole thing below and visit Is This Really Me Facebook for ordering details of this beautiful white seven inch vinyl single.

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Is This Really Me Facebook
Is This Really Me at Soundcloud

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Album of the Month, Featured, Headline, International music, News

Album of the Month: The Heavy Blinkers – Health

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HeavyBlinkersHealth

The Heavy Blinkers and Health. I’ve waited this for a long time. The Heavy Blinkers and their album The Night and I Are Still So Young meant the world to me back in 2004. During the next few years I red about the first stages of making the follow-up, Health. Then years went by and the talk of The Heavy Blinkers and their massive and epic album Health started to fade away. At some point, I assumed that I won’t ever have the chance to actually hear it, but thankfully I was wrong. Health was officially released on 30th of July.

With that kind of background, the album has a certain mythical element surrounding it. At least in my overly romanticized mind. Therefore I was both excited and scared to hear it. What if I don’t actually like it at all? The expectations were ridiculously high and even unfair. Nothing less than a perfect pop album would feel like a disappointment. Also the facts were these. Health was going to be highly ambitious and fully orchestrated concept album and if you are regular reader you know that I usually prefer simple three minute pop song or beautiful folk song played on acoustic guitar. Other than the love I had for The Heavy Blinkers and their harmonic pop music, the odds weren’t actually on their favor.

When the first outtake Perfect Tourists arrived all the worries drifted away. This was The Heavy Blinkers I fell in love with and actually it could well have been an outtake from The Night and I Are Still So Young. Certainly a perfect piece of pop music on all accounts. After that it was a lot easier to prepare myself for the first listening session of the full album. But it is fair to say that the whole thing wasn’t as easy to digest as Perfect Tourists. A steady flow of magical orchestrated pop music, but individual songs (other than Child of The Radio) didn’t really stand out from the beautifully dressed crowd. This proved to be a rather minor worry, because it didn’t took me more than a couple of spins to fall in love with this record. In some sense the songs still don’t really stand up from the crowd. Of course songs like God Bless Hazel and Why Must Your Hide Your Light? would win any kind of song contest, but Health really works best as a whole album. I just completely lose the track of time and place while listening to this. Magical moments follow each other. The arrangements and the orchestration is gorgeous throughout the record. Jason Michael MacIsaac is a true pop wizard. In lesser hands, this album could have turn out to be just a mess. And the vocals. Oh my. So beautiful. Wonderful Jenn Grant does most of the lead vocals. Her solo albums are also worth investigating. I should do that myself as well (only have the first two). If you didn’t guess it already, this is a five hearts album and a strong contender for the album of the year award.

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[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/99797815″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
 
The Heavy Blinkers Website

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