1) Tomorrow; 2) African Air; 3) Child Is My Name; 4) Night After Night; 5) View from the Sea; 6) Drown Little Child; 7) Teeth; 8) Disbelief; 9) Slowed Down; 10) Without Listening
Fresh, exciting, wonderfully melodic. A classic, scene-setting debut.
Key tracks: "Tomorrow", "Child Is My Name", "Disbelief"
The late 90s were a fertile breeding ground for brand new Finnish talent. Maybe it was something in the water or maybe it was the influence from what was happening in the UK and the US breaking through to the Nordic consciousness, but it suddenly felt like anything was possible and the groundroots music scene started bursting with new names taking lessons from English-language rock and adapting the sound into the Finnish mindset. It was mostly bubbling under the mainstream of course – lots of critical acclaim and countless small names becoming cult classics overnight to be treasured forevermore in scene-centric box sets, but no real presence on the airwaves over the more experienced, foreign peers. Which was fine; it gave the scene a chance to develop without pressure and grow slowly through the internet and music shows on small-time cable channels.
When they first debuted, Kemopetrol sounded completely unique to the Finnish landscape and in retrospect, can comfortably be attributed to be the icebreaker in charge of the new wave of Finnish music about to take over by storm in the 00s. In the grand scheme of things they hadn’t developed anything unique – their debut Slowed Down is so early 00s zeitgeisty in its sound – but they had two very strong feats of their own: one, they were Finnish and two, they actually broke into public consciousness big-time. You could hear them on the radio with their legitimate hits, you could hear them on the TV with their music licensed to advertisements, you could actually see their name in the headlines. They spearheaded the movement breaking new ground and while I’m sure it would have happened later on anyway through other means, I genuinely attribute Kemopetrol with not only helping Finnish indie to become popular, but also helping to shape the sound of Finnish pop music in the new millennium. There’s a direct line starting from here and going through a range of acts from indie darlings like Husky Rescue to latter-day mainstream pop such as Chisu.
Slowed Down, then, is a bit of classic record. It’s not just a famous in its general cultural relevance as described above, but it’s also somewhat of a magnum opus for the band themselves. It didn’t have the biggest mainstream impact out of the band’s albums (that award goes to the follow-up Everything’s Fine) and there’s something noteworthy to say about the band’s ability to change and re-invent themselves a number of times later on, but it’s here where the biggest impact lies. To wit, it has “Child Is My Name”: the band’s inarguable signature tune, the song that got them recognised in the first place and a cut that still remains remarkably captivating to the point of never failing to seize the attention when it plays. It’s a perfect match of an outstanding melody that feels huge without ever directly actually sounding so, a killer bass riff, a deep production that gives them both an otherwordly tone and a set of suitably vague lyrics that probably sound deeper than what they actually are, but which suit the tone of the music spectacularly. It is, in itself, one of those songs that make the album it resides in worth a mention. It also doesn’t even begin to describe what the album itself actually is.
Slowed Down is very much a mongrel album – a mixture of sounds so apart from eachother that it would be bafflingly bizarre if not for the fact that somehow, somehow, Kemopetrol actually managed to marry them together. The ten songs scatter between Britpop both at its breeziest and most upbeat as well as its angriest and angstiest while taking a dip down in dub and making eye contact with trip-hop, eventually finishing the album in a happy-dappy rave-out because why the hell not at this point. It’s sometimes a little jarring – the metal-riffic “Drown Little Girl” as a prime example – but to their credit the band make it work. A large part of this is due to the production. While the songs may come from altogether different places, they’re all treated the same sonically and the same rules are applied to each of them. It helps to tie down the songs and make it feel like they belong together, showing off Kemopetrol as a band who simply have a wide range of influences rather than one that haphazardly aims everywhere in confusion. There’s of course singer Laura Närhi’s voice too. She doesn’t have the strongest set of pipes but her tone is perfect for the music and she never really alters it across the album, which once again acts as a binding glue rather than as a flaw. There’s a bit of a Finnish twang to it but it’s strangely charming in its own right.
What actually edges the album from great to classic are three cuts in particular. “Child Is My Name” we’ve already talked about but it’s worth an essay in itself if one were so inclined and definitely at least deserves another direction mention here. “Without Listening” is a tour-de-force closer that finishes the album in a way that it deserves: by making absolutely no sense compared to anything that came before, with its space discoteque vibe bearing no resemblance to anything else here, but sounding so exuberant and passionately joyous that it’s clear the band were having the time of their lives when they were given a chance to record their music. Then there’s “Disbelief” – quite possibly the best thing Kemopetrol have ever committed to tape, no matter how brilliant “Child Is My Name” is. It’s a five-minute trip through hazily dreamy soundscapes, pop perfection melodies, soaringly spacey guitars and bursts of energy that break through the dreaminess and take the song to warp speed. It’s a huge song that starts so benignly but ends up somewhere completely different: a proper journey encapsulated into a pop song. It’s special, genuinely special. Where the rest of the album is a strong collection of songs on its own, it’s these three songs that really make the case why Kemopetrol were the ones to make an impact in the larger scale: you needed a band who were able to tap into something special like this to be able to reach out.
And reach out they did, both to the general audience and to myself, and Slowed Down still continues to do so. It’s definitely an album very tied down to what the music world was up to at the turn of the millennium, almost like acting as the marriage between the British strain of pop/rock that was everywhere at the time and the downtempo atmospherics that would soon begin their climb to relevance. But it’s not aged in the slightest and if anything, the time between then and now has only made it more obvious that the album’s success was due to its great songs, not because of any particular external factors. There’s also the context that comes from knowing the rest of Kemopetrol’s journey. While the nature of those albums will be tackled on their in their own reviews, the gist is that the band became more precise and polished in their execution with time and while that’s not a bad trait in itself by any means, a part of why Slowed Down sounds a little bit more special is because it’s still a bit aloof and imprecise: there’s a type of untamed nature to it that gives it life, the backbone of the music being the still-youthful energy of a young band unafraid and eager. It has character. Combine it with the songwriting and the sound, and even when you strip away all the contextual and cultural bobbins the underlining message is clear: Slowed Down is a great, varied and inspired album that would’ve been a landmark release even if it had stayed bubbling under in its own scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment