Husky Rescue - Country Falls (2004)

1) Sweet Little Kitten; 2) Summertime Cowboy; 3) New Light of Tomorrow; 4) Sunset Drive; 5) My World; 6) City Lights; 7) Gasoline Girl; 8) Rainbow Flows; 9) Sleep Tight Tiger; 10) Mean Street; 11) The Good Man; 12) The Man Who Flew Away

Less a band here and more a group of people under one producer's varied vision, but the gorgeous atmospheric touch and impossibly sweet melodies are already present.

Key tracks: "Summertime Cowboy", "New Light of Tomorrow", "City Lights"

Husky Rescue's recipe is clear and recognisable. There's the wispy vocals, the atmospheric dream pop production and the unimitable Nordic charm that ties it all together and gives it that extra little magic. They make catchy melodies for the moments when you watch the sun set in the horizon, when you're driving on an empty road at 1AM or when you're enjoying your personal quiet with your headphones on. Some things have changed along the years but you can always count on the same identifiable elements to be there, like a reliable comrade who's always perfect to take along when a particular mood strikes. Those elements are on Country Falls too.

Where Country Falls - their debut - is a little different is that at this stage Husky Rescue are still closer to a producer's project, not a band or a collaboration. Everything's still taking shape, various pieces swapped around to see which fits the spot better. Rather than a set group of people going for a singular vision, this is head man Marko Nyberg's playground and he enlists numerous helping hands to stretch out the same central stylistic idea - soundtrack-esque pop - into various directions. Future lead singer Reeta-Leena Vestman (née Korhola) is only one of the various voices (male and female) found throughout the album, with no single vocal identity establishing itself as the lead across the variety of songs. Which is apt, because the songs themselves vary: you can find the more obvious blueprints to their next couple of records throughout Country Falls but there's also excursions to wholly different places, from instrumental chillout to perky sugar-laden melodies and a song dominated by a long spoken word piece. The atmospheric production is the connecting factor between the songs and prevents the album from being more disjointed than it could in theory be: if there's one feeling Country Falls wants to leave you with, it's one of being surrounded by a cloud of smooth sounds.

That slight disjointedness that peeks out periodically is both part of Country Falls' charm and the reason why it feels a little askew from the rest of the group's catalogue. Its air is rich with turn-of-millennium chillout wave and that makes it easy to slot the album into a particular place in time and geography. That, together with the variety in songs and singers, means it lacks the Husky Rescue -specific identity the later albums would have; something like Country Falls could have come from so many directions around the same time, and there's a direct lineage between this and peak chilltronica like Röyksopp's Melody AM. But the same approach also brings many great things that the band - when they later actually became a band - wouldn't have sought to create later on. "Summertime Cowboy" is the brightest, perkiest pop moment ever released under the Husky Rescue name, a song for summer afternoons rather than evenings, and its sunshine is absolutely irresistable. "New Light of Tomorrow" is a marvellous piece of soothing melancholy that would only need a little more prominent guitar part in order to have found a place in any respectably moody euro-rock album of the time; Sam Shingler's vocals work perfectly in it as well, to a point that some of the song's effect could have been lost with a singer more in line with the standard Husky Rescue style. The 8-minute showpiece finale "The Good Man" is the closest the album comes to nailing the initial soundtrack-leaning concept perfectly; it begins with a slow build-up lead by a spoken word narrative and once it's done, the music becomes the storyteller, bit by bit becoming a grand, dynamic showpiece growing in intensity and greatness, like a great piece of score depicting a long scene growing in scope each second. In the tracklist it appears after a period of long silence following "Mean Street" like a bonus track that found itself attached into the main tracklist, but the idea of it being apart from the actual album at any point feels so strange given it's one of its most impressive musical statements.

What these curveball moments happen to demonstrate is that at this stage, Husky Rescue might be a little too chill. The template for the rest of the album is mellow and suave, and frequently that's great. "City Lights", "Sweet Little Kitten", "Rainbow Flows", "Sunset Drive" make a reasonable backbone for Country Falls; a couple of them, namely the blissful musical cuddle "Sweet Little Kitten" and "City Lights" which might as well be the singular definition of Husky Rescue, are even among the album's best songs. Still, despite the minor variations in the formula it can get a little too relaxed, to the point that you end up craving more of those moments where Nyberg and the gang stretch their wings. If you're in the mood for being enveloped by a pillow of smooth sounds it's great, but particularly the back half of the album gets very, very mellow in a way that's in danger of becoming overly so, before "The Good Man" wakes things up (it's then probably ironic that the literal lullaby "Sleep Tight Tiger" is my favourite of this stretch, but it's just too cosy not to fall in love with). It's not a criticism per se, more an observation - that atmosphere is what drew me to Country Falls in the first place, but if you're not in the right mind set for it the album can leave much less of an impression behind.

The next few albums would see Husky Rescue become more of a group that creates music together and through that their sound would grow more dynamic, and that style would come to define them forevermore; even if eventually Nyberg would deconstruct and rebuild the group again as a more electronic outfit. Country Falls then is probably the purest incarnation of the initial idea behind Husky Rescue: sweet pop songs with a richly textured sound that would evoke majestic landscapes in mind, with the world and the soul resting easy within them. It's done with skill and charm, and it's easily one of the better records of the particular stylistic wave it's ended up becoming associated with. Certainly production-wise it's a marvel: it really shines through a good set of headphones and in that form you really get a sense of the atmosphere taking you to places. And yet, while its heart yearns for soothing sounds it's the parts where it goes somewhere wholly different and lively that leave the strongest impressions, and that contrast leaves it a little less than a sum of its parts. If I sound a little conflicted on what to make of it, then that's what I am: it's impossible to deny Country Falls' charms and strengths - it's a very, very good album - but at the same time it's the Husky Rescue album I listen to the least these days because it lacks the focus the others have.

Still, play Country Falls on a late summer evening when the sun goes down, and it'll feel like the most perfect record for that moment in time.

Rating: 7/10