Laika & The Cosmonauts
Surfs You Right

I'm going to say it here and deny it here: Finland is a WONDERFUL country! Not only does it have beautiful places like forests, caves, snow-covered expanses, and mountains, not only is it the home of the builder's phone (the Nokia 3330), not only does it have an incredible culture twinned with Hungary... but it also has a fantastic music scene! The industrial of Turmion Kätilöt and Ruoska, the folk of Gjallarhorn or Loituma, the psychedelic rock of Sammal and many others, the folk metal scene with Korpiklaani, Kivimetsän Druidi, and Finntroll, its immense black metal school (which I love more than the Norwegian and Swedish ones), and many other merits...including having given birth in the 60s to one of the most esteemed pop phenomena in Finnish land: Rautalanka, a still flourishing musical scene of almost entirely instrumental rock music. A genre that is as alien as it may seem atypical for those accustomed to other sounds (I won't name names): 60s costumes, extensive use of Tape Echo (made with the appropriate apparatus, without any digital effect), very melodic, melancholic sounds almost always in minor chords, groups and artists who make their instruments and amplifications themselves, all details that give the impression that Rautalanka is a closed genre. However, the immense creativity that has always distinguished Finns surprises you, and this is largely demonstrated with the album I am about to review (forgive the endless preamble): "Surfs You Right" by Laika & The Cosmonauts.

This album, specifically their second album released in 1990, contains 12 fairly short tracks, totaling a short half-hour (28 minutes and 54 seconds), and judging from the cover, wonderful in its extreme simplicity, it immerses us in the full marine, summer, and tropical sounds typical of 60s surf rock, but obviously revisited in pure Rautalanka style, with tape echo turned up, melancholic melodies, and all the rest, in a mix that I would define as Post Surf Rock, a very suitable name. This album offers a range of simply perfect sounds, with memorable and nostalgic guitar riffs like in "Zunami," "Bullseye," or "King Cobra," references to more classic rock with the surf/rockabilly riff of the opening title track "Surf You Right," the rides of "Point of No Return," and small touches of class like the screams in the title track, the samples taken from Tarzan films in "Don't Monkey with Tarzan," and finally keyboards and saxophones that peek in a couple of tracks like the aforementioned "Don't Monkey with Tarzan," "Oahu Luau," and many other things. I absolutely recommend listening to this album, which, although it doesn't last very long, is still a short half-hour of tropical and "beachy" sounds, with beautiful and imaginative riffs that never become cloying and that cuddle you...without a doubt the perfect album to listen to under the umbrella or while you're in Hawaii!