Compared to its Scandinavian neighbours, Finland’s impact on popular music has been minimal at best. Apart from Hanoi Rocks, Leningrad Cowboys, Bomfunk MCs (or “Bumfuck MCs” as a former flatmate of mine thought they were called) and The Rasmus, my research (i.e. a couple of minutes on Wikipedia) appears to suggest that Finland’s music scene consists mainly of amusingly-named death metal bands like Impaled Nazarene, National Napalm Syndicate and Satanic Warmaster.
If anyone is likely to change this then it’s Varvara, whose third album Death Defying Tricks is the most exciting thing to come out of Helsinki since Jari Litmanen. Produced by Hives/Refused knob-twiddler Pelle Gunnerfeldt, it’s a big, bouncy, crunchy beast that doesn’t so much announce its presence as kick in the door with the opening double-whammy of the riffmungous ‘Sons’, and the irresistibly catchy ‘Caught’, which switches halfway through from romantic Weezer-influenced power pop (“I don’t hear what they say, I don’t care ‘cos I’m caught in your eyes“) to cynical, resigned horn-drenched waltz-ballad (“And if I imagine us together now, I’d also see the future when it’s all gonna come to a point when your breath begins to smell and my jokes start to suck/The first fight, and then comes the second one, and shit it’s all fucked, it’s all fucked”), before joyously switching back to being a pop song again. It’s wonderful.
Really, if you have any amount of affection for the likes of QOTSA, Foo Fighters or Pixies (before they turned into the sick joke they are today) you are sure to find room in your heart for Death Defying Tricks. To hear ‘No Reason’ once is to have its chorus and its guitar solo stuck in your head for the rest of the day. ‘Shadow of Mistrust’s mix of loud riffage and brass section recalls Scream Dracula Scream-era Rocket From the Crypt, and there is little higher praise than that. And most exhilarating of all is the euphoric youthful reminiscence of album closer ‘Crossed My Mind’ (“You were an IN-FLU-ENCE – a controversial one…I just couldn’t keep up with you”), which, if there’s any justice in the world, will cause carnage in the festival fields of Europe and beyond next summer.
But Varvara aren’t all about fret-melting garage rock, and Death Defying Tricks has its more thoughtful side. ‘Arrows’ is a slow burning ballad that suddenly explodes into a storm of guitars; ‘Since We Can’t Explain’ is a tricksy symphonic epic about a dying relationship (“Since we can’t explain the way things are, we probably shouldn’t talk at all”); and boy-girl duet ‘Headlights’, a very pretty look back at teenage romance – “Kids are skipping school, they’re smoking secretly/They’ve found a perfect hiding place from behind a grocery store/You are next to me, staring at your feet…” – is simply one of the best songs I’ve heard all year.
Finns are most definitely looking up. Sorry.
