Kiki Pau
Pines

Ah the Finns!

I've met only a few, but none of those I've had the pleasure of chatting with was completely sane. All have a latent crazy or manic streak, silent but very attentive, and all with a remarkable sense of humor. Moreover, they have one of the most delirious languages the human mind can conceive, a root that shares with Hungarian some grammatical difficulties that we can only dream of, and a pronunciation very similar to ours but on acid.

So double joy when I come across a genius group like these Kiki Pau, coming from cheerful Finland. Before “Pines”, their third album, it seems the group was devoted to harmless indie rock. Then, strolling through the woods of Tampere, they probably ended up picking the wrong mushrooms and realized that there is another musical world beyond song form. I completely made up this anecdote, but not the result.

Thanks, perhaps, to Gustav Ejes of the Swedish band Dungen (who in 2003 with “Ta Det Lugnt”created one of the best psychedelic albums of the last decade) who produced the album, the Finns insert 4 tracks that start from broadly pop bases but often distort the structures, extending the durations and clashing very different atmospheres.

This is the case with the opening “Tomte Mars”, which for 4 of the 9 minutes is sleepy, until a kind of country ballad takes over, complete with harmonica, but everything as if played by the acoustic Hawkwind of the first album, and at 7 minutes, the voice and chorus enter. As they say, well begun is half done.

No less the rest of the tracks. The title track, divided into “Pines” and “Pines II Makumatka”, is a long elaboration that in the first part favors calm, subdued, and totally instrumental atmospheres, while in the second introduces varied and imaginative instrumentation, based on oboe, Jew's harp, flute, following an almost prog sinusoidal pattern, among Middle Eastern hints, guitar fugues, and a long pastoral phrasing. Highlight piece  “Astronauttija”: wilsonian choruses hand in hand with a 60's march rhythm and great psychedelic guitar work.

The perfect group for the next Kaurismaki film.