Featured, Finnish music, Headline, News

Stream Doing Time by The Rollstons

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As you may already know. The Rollstons will play their classic debut cd-r album Doing Time live at Monsters Of Pop festival (Telakka, Tampere 23.09.2011). Now you can listen to this whole album at Soundcloud. It’s a wonderful lo-fi indie album and also featured on this little 10 years & 10 reasons project I’ve been doing lately. I love the whole album, but I only added a couple of my biggest favourites below. You’ll find the rest by hitting this soundcloud link.

Still Life With Onions & Garlic:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/22525004″]
 
So Real:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/22525002″]
 
Monsters Of Pop Website

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10 years & 10 reasons, Featured, Finnish music, Headline

10 years & 10 reasons: Penniless

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Penniless: A Cab to the City (West Side Fabrication, 2011)

This series has mostly focused on my old favourites, but now when the 10 year anniversary party is three days away, I thought it’s time to blow a bit of that nostalgia away and celebrate the fact that Finnish indie music is still very much alive and constantly producing future classics. A Cab to The City by Penniless is a definitely a future classic and the best Finnish album of the last few years.

Penniless (and formerly Penniless People Of Bulgaria) has been around since the late 80s / early 90s producing a huge amount of great indie rock songs. I found them probably around 1997 when I bought Velocity. Even though I really liked them from the start, if being brutally honest, I don’t think they were that important to me until the single Adam’s Apple Pie and the album Anola came out in 2001. Adam’s Apple Pie definitely was the final enlightenment and the moment I completely fell in love with them. After that I’ve been planning my pilgrimage to Nakkila (which I shamefully still haven’t done) and enjoyed each and everyone of their releases. The back catalog is extremely convincing, but yet they managed to release the finest album of their career last year. A Cab to the City is just damn brilliant. Power, melancholy and beauty wrapped inside glorious rock songs. It might cause a gentle havoc inside you, but that will only help you feel better. The Missing, Hail Of Bullets, Brothers.. There’s a huge amount of utterly wonderful songs. A perfect album.

Penniless Website

Watch Brothers:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8i_9JJlPm4]

Watch Hail Of Bullets:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNR8-GuuoNI]

Watch Panic:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JRFR5hPobI]

(The reason why I started making One Chord To Another was the fact that I had totally fallen in love with Finnish guitar pop / power pop bands and wanted to make them better known. Nowadays onechord.net seem to cover a lot of obscure country bands from all over the globe, but Finnish pop was the starting point and still is the main reason this website/blog exists. One Chord To Another becomes 10 years old on 17th of september, 2011. It’s been a long journey and therefore I think I’m allowed to feel a little nostalgic. This not-so-cleverly named 10 years & 10 reasons writing series is meant to select 10 albums/releases that were a huge reason why I either started making One Chord To Another or why I’m still making it. So basicly just 10 finnish releases that will always have a huge place in my heart. One every month I think, so it will be december until the nostalgia is over. Bear with me)

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Album of the Month, Featured, International music, Reviews

Album of the Month: The Deep Dark Woods – The Place I Left Behind

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The Deep Dark Woods: The Place I Left Behind (Six Shooter / Sugar Hill, 2011)

The Deep Dark Woods from Saskatoon, Canada is my new favourite band and their new album The Place I Left Behind is one amazing album. It will definitely be the album of the month and someone must release one hell of an album later in the year, if this doesn’t end up being my album of the year as well. I just can’t get tired of this and believe me, I’ve tried. I listened to it eight hours in a row at work for several days and the thought that I have other albums on my iPod never occurred to me during those days.

The Place I Left Behind is one of the most convincing folk rock and alternative country albums that I’ve heard during the last couple of years. Beautiful lead vocals, rich harmonies and warm sounds gently collide with sad & lonesome thoughts, gloomy & dark stories.. and even old-fashioned murder ballads. Sometimes I even feel guilty because I feel warmth and beauty all around even though I’m listening some slow and lonesome moment that maybe should evoke an opposite reaction. But maybe that contrast is what makes it all the more striking and captivating. Frontman Ryan Boldt has a perfect voice for this kind of music and the whole album is so beautifully crafted. The storytelling is excellent throughout the record. Whether it’s an old fashioned crime tale or a field study of urban loneliness, it works wonderfully. Basicly I just love the whole record. Dear John sometimes feels a little out of place, but as a huge pop fan, I really enjoy that lighter sound as well. The Place I Left Behind is a masterpiece.

The Deep Dark Woods Website
The Deep Dark Woods at Facebook

Listen to Westside Street

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/18096317″]
 
The Deep Dark Woods discuss about the new album (some wonderful songs from the album playing on the background as well):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDDJtQoz6a8]
Note that so far the album has only been released in Canada by Six Shooter Recordings. The album will get an US / Europe release from Sugar Hill Records in october. My apologies to Sugar Hill and the band. The samples were just too brilliant and the wait would have been unbearable, so I had to buy it directly from Canada.

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