1) Sleeps a Friendly Stranger; 2) A Hard Try; 3) City & the Streets; 4) Buildings; 5) Hinges; 6) Why Don't You Let It Happen; 7) The Interventionist; 8) Jesus/Hypnotist; 9) Bill Withers; 10) Wrappt in a Carpet
Rubik as a rock band. Unfairly forgotten: the later albums really don't show off just how solid these guys were with guitars, and you can find a lot of classics here.
Funny how things change in retrospect. Once upon a time Bad Conscience Patrol sounded like a brand new band's promising, exciting entrance: an album that was clearly hailing from an established, popular sound but which had a lot of great songwriting to it and enough personality that it was clear Rubik would be a force to reckoned with once they'd find their own voice. And they truly did find it, to the point that everything after the first album bears barely a resemblance to Bad Conscience Patrol, and the debut now looks like a bizarre relic out of place in the band's discography. What made Rubik so interesting in the first place ultimately proved to have no bearing to why they would be a great band.
But back in 2007, Rubik were a part of the wave of rock bands borne in the aftermath of OK Computer. Bad Conscience Patrol flicks through various strains the post-Radiohead bands took, switching from millennial paranoia and anxiety to sky-piercing anthems laced with careful hope. Bad Conscience Patrol wears its influences in its sleeves and some songs lean towards their inspirations more than others ("Wrappt in a Carpt" sounds exactly what you would write after binging on OK Computer, the Yorke-isms of the title included) but Rubik carefully flash their own character throughout, to make it clear there's more to them than their record collection. The band's characteristic erratic creativity is present already, leading to plenty of unexpected twists along the way that aren't all too obvious from the initial notes: the bonkers rhythm-flicking assault of "Buildings" isis the musical equivalent of your cat having a sudden freak-out running around the room, and "Why Don't You Let It Happen" shifts moods from murky organ pitter-patter to a jovial march and eventually an epic closure like three songs perfectly inhabiting a single skin. They bring a touch of something surprising to the mix, songs rarely going exactly where you imagined they would from the first notes.
The big (re-)revelation Bad Conscience Patrol offers is that it's a showcase of just how solid and powerful Rubik were as a rock band - something that the later albums would go to great lengths to obscure. The majority of the songs here breathe the spirit of 90s Britrock but reflected through a unique kind of Nordic lens by way of e.g. Mew: something a little more muscular biding its time in the background, brighter melodies interspersed with crunchy riffs. Rubik also prove that they can go hard if they wanted to: distorted explosions of guitar walls are deployed tactically throughout, keeping the songs on their toes. "Sleeps a Friendly Stranger" and the aforementioned "Buildings" harness Rubik's manic energy into slightly askew rock anthems that rampage like wild beasts in an enclosed space, "The Interventionist" and "Bill Withers" are the album's rock edge at loudest and crunchiest with the former a emotion-laden cry for action and the latter the album's darkest and heaviest cut, and while "Hinges" tones down the guitars and locks into a groove, it keeps its tension bubbling under. Even when they're most obviously paying tribute to their idols, the songwriting stays strong: "Wrappt in a Carpt" may sound like a ripoff but it's a top quality one, building to a finale wrapped in its own paranoia and closing the album to a spellbinding degree, leaving the album to rest on a disquieting but memorable note.
On three particular occasions Rubik completely knock it out of the park, and it's the album's three singles that show Bad Conscience Patrol at its strongest. "City and the Streets" in particular: it's a phenomenal song that for four and a half minutes sounds like the only music there is that matters, soaring in its melancholy euphoria with Artturi Taira's mumbling falsetto instantly becoming the kind of voice that could recite a phone book and resonate a hundredfold. It's one of the best rock songs that Finland has produced to these ears, without any hyperbole: a landmark Finnish indie classic the likes of which rarely land. The towering "A Hard Try" almost does it again, being a hit that never was: an honest-to-god guitar anthem that reaches blissfully cathartic highs through its melodic firework choruses. It's not close to being as strong a "City & the Streets" but that only speaks to the strengths of that song; on its own "A Hard Try" is a classic cut that could have launched a new band with some wider exposure. The last of the lot is also the album's oddball moment, which ironically turned out to be the one thing here that hints where Rubik would venture: the bright, airy and melodic "Jesus/Hypnotist" is in such a huge contrast to anything else on the album that the whole song on its own is a surprise (one of the lead melodic instruments is a banjo), and it's only its guitar-revved finale that brings it in line with the rest of the album. But, its colourful pop twinkle is a thing of beauty and marvel from the get-go: it's so warmly welcoming that the fact that it's so out of place between two of the album's murkiest songs gets brushed away quickly from way of enjoyment. If anything, it acts as the album's brief respite moment as it launches its darker final cuts.
It's practically inevitable but Bad Conscience Patrol itself is framed by its strangeness from its own discography and it's hard to really discuss it without making those comparisons; especially as the kaleidoscopic, more technicolour outfit Rubik changed into gave them the brief amount of wider international exposure and thus sealed the deal as their definitive sound. Following Rubik's dissolution and the attestment that three albums (and some EPs) are all we'll ever get, Bad Conscience Patrol has (perhaps surprisingly) managed to hold its weight better than expected and arguably sounds even better than it did when Rubik's transformation was a current event taking the attention away from the humble beginnings. It's a different side of the band here, utilising their wild ideas into a shape that's on one hand more conventional and something we've all heard before, but in Rubik's hands becomes something that frequently surprises, inspires and, in the end, still excites. While Bad Conscience Patrol may not win all the points on originality, it's thrilling and engaging, and Rubik as a guitar-driven rock outfit could easily stand with the best of their peers. With time the album revealed itself to be more than just a debut with great promise; instead, it can confidently be called a small classic of the rich Finnish 00's indie scene that stands strongly on its own accord.
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