The Ark - We Are the Ark (2000)

1) Hey Modern Days; 2) Echo Chamber; 3) Joy Surrender; 4) It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane; 5) Ain't Too Proud to Bow; 6) Bottleneck Barbiturate; 7) Let Your Body Decide; 8) Patchouli; 9) This Sad Bouquet; 10) Angelheads; 11) Laurel Wreath; 12) You, Who Stole My Solitude

A flamboyant and confident debut, both bolstered and perhaps overshadowed by the inclusion of one truly immortal song. 

Key tracks: "Hey Modern Days", "Joy Surrender", "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane"

I don’t like to generalise but I think all of us gay folks (and presumably all non-straight and/or non-cis folks for that matter) end up doing a fair bit of amateur self-psychoanalysis sooner or later in our lives: what were the first signs that we felt different from our peers, when did we feel at odds when comparing to the expected, et cetera. In general I was a late bloomer when it came to dealing with that whole subject properly, but the sudden arrival of The Ark in the early 2000s was probably the first time the topic appeared as a blip on my radar. Their colourful music scored a fair few significant airplay hits at a time when mainstream popularity was the only real way for me to discover new music and I found myself drawn into those songs, but they came with flamboyant performances and frontman Ola Salo’s playfully provocative theatrics, and thus the band were deemed - in the most elementary grade school way possible - gay, and that wasn’t cool to like. I was a nerdy and not particularly outgoing kid in a small city with a very small friends circle and so I was always paranoid about losing what little social interaction I had, and liking The Ark became something I was very cautious to admit: I sheepishly bought the “It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane” single in the first instance so as not to commit myself wholly to the band by way of owning a whole album, because I felt like I needed to have that song around me. I wasn’t exactly fluent in English but knew it far better than most kids my age (thanks PC games!), and even with my limited knowledge of the language there was something in that song that resonated.

Every morning I would see her getting off the bus
The picture never drops, it's like a multicolored snapshot
Stuck in my brain, it kept me sane
For a couple of years, as it drenched my fears
Of becoming like the others
Who become unhappy mothers
And fathers of unhappy kids
And why is that?
'Cause they've forgotten how to play
Or maybe they're afraid to feel ashamed
To seem strange
To seem insane
To gain weight, to seem gay
I'll tell you this:
That it takes a fool to remain sane
In this world all covered up in shame

That’s a hell of a verse, and even as a kid there was something in its proud defiance that spoke to me - and word-dropping “gay” into the whole thing and grabbing that particular subject head-on felt literally rebellious and smashing taboos. Yet in an unexplainable way it felt good and right to hear it, though the reason why wouldn’t properly click until some years later. But I obsessed over the song and to this date it’s very firmly in my pantheon of my favourite songs of all time: Salo’s fearsomely charismatic performance, that absolute killer of a chorus melody, the breathless run-on section demonstrated above where Salo breathlessly abandons all notion of where to split between the verse, bridge and the chorus, and that soaring, triumphant chorus itself where it feels like the world genuinely has no boundaries. They all coalesce into a genuinely life-affirming, resonant and thoroughly evocative anthem: a monster of a pop song. 

 

Nothing on We Are The Ark threatens to top "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane", but the same qualities that make that song so great are still represented throughout the record. In the five years between their debut EP and this record, The Ark had somehow transformed from a group of borderline sullen goths into a gang of endlessly energetic ambassadors of glam rock throwbacks, and they roll in with the fervour of a band reborn and grasping everything precious about their new life: so much of the record is so positively boisterous and aspirationally joyous. The credit to a lot of it goes to Salo, who even this early on was already scouting for a slot in the halls of all-time great frontmen, with his voice and performance radiating with charisma and sheer, complete command of his audience with every wink of the eye or uttered sentence. There's a charm and a quirk to his lyrics as well that helps make him so engaging. I once read them described as incredibly obviously written by someone not native to the language, not because of grammatical errors but because they exhibit a kind of outside-the-box thinking that's definitely not natural but effective exactly because of it: just take a look at the tongue-twister chorus of "Hey Modern Days", the opener that kicks down the doors and writes the ruleset for the rest of the record to follow, from the extravagant whimsy to the sheer strength of the melodies. He's just as memorable when he's more direct as well: "Let Your Body Decide" is the album's definitive "love yourself regardless of who you are" anthem among many but Salo makes the honesty in the message work, and the swirling, moody closer "You, Who Stole My Solitude" is possibly the only song about love I've come across where the narrator is downright angry about finding someone and falling in love ("did you expect a love song?", Salo coyly winks at the camera at the end of the second verse). He's not necessarily a consistently incredible lyricist but he has a language of his own, and it makes a good part of why The Ark were so exciting.

It's worth emphasising the musical aspect of the record as well, as it's the richness of the melodies that makes We Are The Ark such an exciting album, particularly as a debut. The Ark's glam-influenced pop/rock is the kind of thing that aims to be instant by nature, and when you opt to go down that route you have to go in for the kill when it comes to your choruses, harmonies et al. So, they do. With debuts there's often a great temptation to talk about confidence and ambition, of a band wishing to take on the world and proving why their name should be the one to remember. That's certainly the ethos behind We Are The Ark, where each of the songs exist as one big hook in the best possible way, in that the arrangements and melodies genuinely grab: they're genuinely thrilling in a way that plants a smile across one's face through the sheer power of how well those elements are crafted or how they are presented. They make an instant impression and it's almost show-off-y in how The Ark approach that aspect of their writing. That's even the case for the weaker tracks. "Echo Chamber" kind of goes nowhere, "Ain't Too Proud to Bow" is a sass anthem that only really kicks in once the duelling guitar solo begins and leads into the final blown-up chorus where the song stops being a little flat, and "Patchouli" is almost obnoxiously upbeat in its hippy-dippy sunshine handclaps and sax, and yet they still get under my skin and I can groove to them quite willingly. The reason why I don't think as highly of them is because they come across less developed than the other songs: they lack the sense of dynamics and a level of depth the rest of the album has. Salo's still magnificent as always, but a few times around the record it feels like the band as a whole are almost holding themselves back, lest they get too wild. Maybe it's because there was still some element of figuring out what they should be even after a nearly a decade of musical soul-searching, but you compare the incredibly confident takes like "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane" or the dangerous disco swerve of "Let Your Body Decide" that keep you in their grip firmly throughout and compare to them how "Echo Chamber" and "Patchouli" meander through their verses until they get some jolt of life in their chorus, and you can practically feel yourself swaying to avoid falling into the gap between.

Which leads me to tackling the big question of how this hasn't become the kind of favourite-of-all-time, perfect score record you'd expect given its pivotal role in making me question the world around me, and it's honestly because the album as a whole arrived a little late to the party. I finally got hold of the full album a few years later after hearing and buying "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane", once my friends and I had grown up by a few years and the diversity in music tastes between us had started to show, and it became clear to me that it was perfectly OK to like things that your friends might not. By the time I finally did get around to hearing We Are The Ark in full, they'd already followed it up with 2002's In Lust We Trust and I bought both albums at the same time, and simply from a compositional point of view that older sibling is above and beyond the debut, and Salo gets downright brilliant lyrically in it. That doesn't make We Are The Ark any weaker per se, and I still haven't even mentioned some of my other big favourites (so I'm cramming them here) such as the dramatic "Joy Surrender" with its angelic walls of sound, the flamboyant and parading "Angelheads" that brings a burst of light into the slightly more downtoned latter half of the record, and the genuinely beautiful "This Sad Bouquet" which shows the band can pull off quiet and intimate if they want to. But In Lust We Trust ended up overshadowing We Are The Ark at the time of purchase and "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane" is an outlier on the album in how strongly it connected with me as a music listener and as a human being, compared to the other songs. Outside that, We Are The Ark is absolutely a great record, and when I simply want some larger-than-life pop songs performed by an extravagant gentleman, this is where I turn for such. At its best makes you feel completeley invincible as you stand on top of the world.

Rating: 8/10

Physical corner: Jewel case, liner notes in glossy(!) paper. Lyrics and pictures of all band members, photo manipulated to the point they have an uncanny valley real doll look to them. Salo gets the whole centrefold for himself, of course.

The Ark - The Ark EP (1996)

1) Racing With the Rabbits; 2) I Laid It Down; 3) Cracked Messiah; 4) Od Slatrom Ekil

More grim than glam: mystical ramblings and loud guitar walls. The Ark, before they realised who The Ark were. 

Key tracks: "Racing With the Rabbits", "I Laid It Down"

The thing to note about The Ark's debut EP (officially self-titled but I've heard this being referred to as Racing With the Rabbits EP too) is that this is a very different band to the one that would finally break through under the same name - after all, the EP was released four years before the debut album, and The Ark themselves had existed for a good few years before the EP was recorded. Instead of glittery glam rock and witty lyrics with a sharp tongue, the overall feel here is something more cryptic, noisier on the guitar and occasionally even veering towards dark and heavy. You can still recognise The Ark through the cracks, mostly thanks to Ola Salo's voice, but there's quite a distance between this and their eventual debut album We Are The Ark. That's something to consider when approaching the EP - I felt very cold towards this when I initially came across it due to my expectations being somewhere completely different, but as soon as you can shake that off you can very well enjoy the EP for what it is: a decent four-set song.

The first two tracks are the most Ark-like. "Racing with the Rabbits" starts like a creepy children's lullaby thanks to its recorder intro and Salo's downtone singing, but it turns into an almost-jubilant cascade of choruses the closer the track gets to its end, and you can start to hear the reach for the skies that would become emblematic for them once the band properly got going. It leads onto "I Laid It Down", which is the closest to The Ark you know (and love?) out of the four cuts, and might have even fit one of the earlier albums had it been polished further. The choral "Oppular!" chants are even something close to fun, which stands out in an otherwise quite po-faced release. They're also, perhaps not coincidentally, the best part of this EP. They're rough but there's enough real quality pushing through: a still struggling band starting to catch onto what they're actually good at.

The course correction hasn't yet quite started to crack on the second half of the EP, and it's this section where the ugly duckling reputation of this release comes from. "Cracked Messiah" is the first lyrical tease of the general territory where Salo and the band would make their home in, as opposed to the cryptic babbling and mythological references of the rest of the release, but musically its hard rock inspirations come across misguided at best, and the dark, murky atmosphere and the heavier breakdowns aren't all that well executed. The final track, "Od Slatrom Ekil" closes the EP on a more distinctive even if still not particularly remarkable fashion, mismashing ideas and elements from the rest of the EP and stretching the concoction to ten minutes, which is about six minutes too many for what it actually offers. I'm a sucker for an epic finale but "Od Slatrom Ekil" tries too hard to be one and just gets monotonous.

It's still quite interesting to listen to this in retrospect, but like many debut EPs its place is in the curio box aimed solely for the fans, and even that comes with reservations given how distinct it is from what anyone would actually consider The Ark's signature sound. And that's not rare, bands quite frequently evolve their sound from their very start to even when they get to a proper studio for the first time, but most of the time there's a clear line between the distant end points. This EP on the other hand is fascinating simply because of how distinctly different it is, even when you can hear some of the same DNA bubbling through. It doesn't excuse half the EP from being rather bland, no matter how hard the band try to sound mystical and artsy, and I honestly wouldn't go out of one's way to seek this out unless you’re a real enthusiast. I would absolutely love to have witnessed this particular evolution in real time when it happened, though - there's got to be some very interesting stylistic experiments in the four years between this and the debut.

Rating: 5/10

Physical corner: Slim jewel case, lyrics hidden in the inlay of the cover slip. Fairly basic fare, as expected from an early EP. I imagine my copy is a repress given I bought it from a fairly big online store rather than a collector's site, but I've not been able to track the exact issue given the catalog number seems to have remained the same.

Various Artists - Joulu pulkassa: 20 toisenlaista joululaulua (1998)

1) Juice Leskinen Slam - Me käymme joulun viettohon; 2) Hassisen Kone - On jouluyö nyt laulaa saa; 3) Aknestik - Oravan joulu; 4) Leevi & The Leavings - Jossain on kai vielä joulu; 5) Pauli Hanhiniemi & Normaalijätkät - Tavaratalon ikkuna; 6) Sanna ja Lapset - Voitko vaari vilkuttaa; 7) M.A. Numminen - Joulupukki puree ja lyö; 8) Paula ja Rautsi - Purppurataivas; 9) Rinneradio - Jouluyö, juhlayö; 10) Juice Leskinen Slam - Sika; 11) Hanoi Rocks - Dead by X-Mas; 12) Eppu Normaali - Heinillä härkien kaukalon; 13) Ne Luupojat Surf - Kaikki uskoo joulupukkiin; 14) Yö - Joulu ominpäin; 15) Limonadi Elohopea - Jos sul' on jouluna märkä tyyny; 16) Jussi Hakulinen - Joulu avaruudessa; 17) Lotta Riepu - Sian leuka; 18) Juliet Jonesin Sydän - Silti joulu jaksaa naurattaa; 19) Inkvisitio - Joulupukki tepsuttaa; 20) Trio Töykeät - En etsi valtaa loistoa (feat. Pekka Kuusisto)

The old school class of Finnish alternative rock music celebrating Christmas in their own, curious ways. "20 Christmas songs of a different kind".

Key tracks: Aknestik - "Oravan joulu", Leevi & The Leavings - "Jossain on kai vielä joulu", Hanoi Rocks - "Dead by X-Mas"

This compilation is where my fascination for non-standard Christmas music starts from. My dad bought this album around the time it came out and he got a kick out of playing it when my mom just wanted to listen to classic Christmas songs. Most of the compilation flew over my head when I was a little kid, but I loved listening to it simply because when I did get it, it was speaking about Christmas in a wholly different way than I was used to - a little more cheeky and a lot more rock and roll. These days I get almost obsessively excited whenever artists I like release Christmas songs or even whole EPs/albums, and while it's my combined love for both music and Christmas that's the main reason for it, this collection served as a catalyst by showing that it's not all holly-jolly standards.

Joulu pulkassa, subtitled "20 Christmas songs of a different kind", is a compilation of Christmas songs - both originals and covers of Finnish standards - from the 80s and 90s released by the legendary Finnish label Poko Records, one of the major names that defined what Finnish alternative and independent rock scene sounded like in the late 1970s and 1980s. The artist list is a selection of various iconic names of the early Finnish alternative scene, with a few unknowns thrown in the mix for good measure, and most of the artists featured are famous for being more or less irreverent or anarchistic in their own myriad of ways. With song titles such as "Santa Claus Bites and Punches" and "If Your Pillow Is Wet on Christmas" and the CD artwork featuring a close up of the cartoon pig's head with a bullet hole where the CD hole is (the Finnish Christmas dinner is centered around a piece of ham rather than a turkey, get it), the overall tone is all very playfully edgy, in the kind of way that old-school Finnish side-of-the-road rock scene was. It's the kind of record where you can find a punk rock take on a Finnish hymnal classic that can be described as literally snotty ("Heinillä härkien kaukalon" by Eppu Normaali, before they became barfly karaoke fodder) and where the centerpiece of the collection is a sardonic ode to carnivorous joy of slaughtering a pig and finally tugging into it in detail after a year of fattening it up. That's "Sika" by Juice Leskinen Slam (the only artist who gets to have two goes on the tracklist; "Me käymme joulun viettohon" is a functional opener that sets up the expectations for the rest of the album), and for the adolescent me it was the record as far as I was concerned. My mom hated the song, but its attitude was so radically different and incredibly amusing compared to all other Christmas music I knew that it was the sole reason I wanted to listen to the album.

As an adult, having come back to the record with my own copy, it's been interesting to realise two things. One, that "Sika" isn't actually all that good and that it would probably work better if it were 50% shorter because the one good joke it has (the ridiculous tone, with the wonky organ and unenthusiastic choir) has grown stale by the time it starts its third verse-chorus loop with many more to come. Two, a lot of the album is surprisingly well-behaved. In-between the unruly schoolboy takes are various attempts at more genuine Christmas songs, just with a more rock and roll touch. Some even barely register as Christmas songs: "Oravan joulu" by Aknestik (with its typically Finn-depressed lyric) is just a really good, smooth guitar hit while "Purppurataivas" by Paula ja Rautsi is a 90s new age electronica cut through and through packed full with the cheesy earnestness that comes with the territory. Leevi & The Leavings did a whole bunch of Christmas songs during their career, some cheekier than others, and somehow it's their most honest and genuine one that's ended up here - and that's great, because "Jossain on kai vielä joulu" is my probably my favourite Finnish Christmas song, dressing up its big bright chorus with actual Yuletide magic in a heartwarmingly sappy, but not too earnest, fashion. The record also closes with a straightforward instrumental version of "En etsi valtaa loistoa", which has one of my favourite melodies in the canonical Finnish Christmas songbook, and it's a genuinely beautiful take on the song, full of warmth and peaceful quiet that's basically crack to a Christmas romantic like me. It sounds so out of place compared to everything before it, but at the same time there's something pleasant in closing a record of off-kilter Christmas songs with something more traditional, showing that by the end of the evening, even the bad boys are allowed to feel a little bit of the real Christmas spirit.

It is absolutely a mixed bag of a compilation though, with the twenty-song length overstuffing the stocking. Some songs are genuinely great, "Jossain on kai vielä joulu" and "Oravan joulu" (which has become a regular in my Christmas rotation after rediscovering it here) in particular, and there's also other unexpected triumphs - 80s hair theatrics do little for me but Hanoi Rocks' "Dead by X-Mas" almost steals the whole show here with its glam energy. But a good half of the tracklist is decent if unremarkable background music, with some parts that are nicer than others but which barely scan when reading the tracklist. There's also a few real clunkers - Yö are always painfully milquetoast and their contribution here is so aggressively bland I actually skip it, and while I have general respect for the legendary provocateur M.A. Numminen's career, I have very little time for most of his music and the impish "Joulupukki puree ja lyö" isn't an exception. I'm generally not a big fan of the particular old school gang of Finnish rock history that this collection - and Poko as a whole, to be honest - represents and if it wasn't for that personal Christmas connection I doubt I would have ever cared to seek out to hear most of the music here; the tracklist is full of instantly identifiable names for any Finn, but it's like a list of artists that leave me completely cold for a variety of reasons and who I mainly just associate with boomer bars and generic 'Suomirock' radio stations, with a few exceptions. That definitely affects how replayable this actually is. That said, I also feel harsh about possibly underselling this: the amount of songs I like do to one degree or another outweigh the ones I genuinely could not care less about, and if you catch me in the right seasonal spirit, I'll be jamming along to this contentedly while wrapping presents or decorating my home or other festive chores. It's one of the few albums I own where the skip button gets used quite liberally to get to the parts I genuinely enjoy.

My biggest takeaway from Joulu pulkassa is, surprisingly, how little nostalgia I have for it. There is obviously some there, and particularly as someone currently living abroad, listening to Christmas music in my original tongue gives surprisingly fuzzy feelings. And yet, I have very little actual resonance or personal touchpoint with this record beyond some fuzzy memories, and I am suspecting I'm the one to blame for that - it wasn't until I obtained my own copy that I realised just how much I ignored the rest of the album in favour of - sigh - "Sika". Joulu pulkassa does make for an interesting time capsule of a record, but its place in my shelf is ultimately because of its (admittedly diminished) place in personal music history rather than because of my actual affection for most of the music within. 

Rating: 6/10

Kent - Isola (1997)

1) Livräddären; 2) Om du var här; 3) Saker man ser; 4) Oprofessionel; 5) OWC; 6) Celsius; 7) Bianca; 8) Innan allting tar slut; 9) Elvis; 10) Glider; 11) 747

The first real Kent album. Moody guitars, walls of sound and classic anthems.

Key tracks: "Livräddären", "Saker man ser", "747"

In the liner notes for the box set Box 1991-2008, frontman Jocke Berg describes Isola as Kent's "first real album". It's an accurate nutshell of a description. Kent's first two records were a decent introduction and Verkligen in particular already had some genuinely great parts to its name, but both were rushed out by a band who were still learning. By the time the Isola sessions started, Kent had the experience to start expanding their horizons and they were more in tune of what worked and what didn't. In a more practical fashion, the surprise success of the last record had granted the band a proper studio budget and their new record ended up being produced by Zed, who'd click with the band so well he'd become a regular fixture with the group for a good while. Those same liner notes also mention that the band’s general line of thought at the time was that it was perfectly fine to be ambitious and to treat the band as something with a real future, instead of sticking to some pre-conceived notion of being a scruffy grassroots indie band forever. So, with the options available to them and with the sense of progress they themselves felt they had made, Kent decided to transform themselves into what they fantasised they could be. It worked.

Kent's sound until now had been indebted to the particularly melancholy strain of 90s Britrock, which itself was in the process of transitioning from the swooping Britpop-era anthems into the anxiety of the OK Computer-driven end years of the decade, and Isola tapped into the sweet Venn diagram spot right between the two: there's strings and there's hope as the band build themselves louder with each chorus, but a tinge of Scandinavian sadness trails underneath it all. That particular concoction clicked with the general public. For the benefit of the non-Nordics in the audience, it's perhaps important to note that Isola was a big album. The lead single "Om du var här" was almost omnipresent in Finland, and I can't even imagine how huge it must have been in Kent's native Sweden - it's a big, dramatic, string-laden angst anthem that sounds custom built for purpose to serve as an introductionary statement, that the scrawny punks of the first two albums had grown up. It lead Isola towards the charts and accolades across Northern Europe - so much so that Kent becoming a true international act could have been a real possibility. 

(As a matter of a fact, a re-recorded version of Isola sung entirely in English does exist, in an attempt to break the language barrier and reach the Anglosphere audiences; but the clunkily translated and pronounced attempt didn't quite work, and so Isola remained a Scandinavian success story.)

I don't mean to imply that chart success equals greatness, but sometimes - particularly with albums of this kind in this era of music - it can act as a kind of vindication, that all the hard work finally pays off with good reason. Isola is exactly that: the underdogs snagging the trophy. The reason it took off is because it harnessed all the latent talent Kent had that was almost bursting, and in doing so the band proved what had been hinted at on the first two albums: that Kent were actually a legitimately great band with some serious songwriting talent within, and it was now becoming too obvious to ignore. Isola doesn't stray away from the first two albums as much as it completes the gradual evolution from the beginning to now, perfecting the formula that the band rode on for in their early years - loud guitar walls, a strong sense of melody, and an emotional impact booming through Jocke Berg's slurring voice which has come leaps and bounds since he first got in front of the microhpone. The guitars crunch more, the choruses soar wider and the emotions climb higher - this is what the first two albums promised but didn't quite deliver.

Kent letting go of the fear of ambition also leads to some new winds blowing through Isola's covers, namely in its wider arrangements. Isola marks the moment where Kent begin to introduce new elements to their sound and moving beyond their standard rock band setup; with baby steps, but drawing a clear line nonetheless. The vulnerable late-night ballad “OWC” is dominated by piano rather than the familiar guitars, and the ethereal "Innan allting tar slut" is drowned in soft drum machines and keyboard textures, which fit perfectly into Kent's moody soundscapes; and where the slow songs used to be the band’s weakness, here they’re downright standouts, these two in particular. Elsewhere the expanded sounds can simply mean some additional strings (special mention to the stellar sweeping ending to “Oprofessionel”) or taking full advantage of the once-again quintet’s ability to wield three guitars at once if they want to, leading to the shimmering “Celsius” which has just about as many lead guitar parts as it has players. When they do just want to rock, there’s a dynamic confidence that wasn’t there before, from the driving rhythmic flow of “Bianca” to the incredible opening salvo of the crushingly loud "Livräddären", the timelessly undeniable rock and roll force of “ Om du var här” and the gently wistful 90s alt rock perfection of "Saker man ser". Of these, “Livräddären” and “Saker man ser” are in particular the most perfect examples of what Kent aimed for in the 90s, and why they were so great at it.

While “ Om du var här” was the big calling card, the album’s actual signature song is its closer “747” - not just because of how close the album’s visual side is to the song, but because out of everything on the record nothing exemplifies the band’s new horizons as much as "747" does. It’s the natural climax point that the rest of the album builds up to both musically and through production, with a partly-programmed drum beat shuffling through a dreamy soundscape the likes of which just a year ago would have felt impossible for Kent to achieve. It's when Berg finishes his vocals roughly around a third of th way through when the song truly begins and lifts off towards its sunset ride ending, dovetailing into infinity with skyscraping guitars and textural, carefully introduced synthesized elements. "747" is a lot of things: a fantastic fireworks-accentuated closer which feels like the natural end point for everything that came before, the codification of the now-tradition to close off the album with a long epic, and and enduring classic song and a genuinely legendary piece of Kent’s discography. It's also a foreshadowing of things to come: if Isola is Kent’s first real album, then the synthesis of sounds of “747” is the arrow sign pointing towards the group's future, and even now you can practically feel the pieces magically clicking into place when you listen to it. 

Kent would go on to make greater records than Isola as they followed their new ambition and instincts further, growing into a widely talented band while perhaps coincidentally moving away from the straightforward guitar sound that they started with. That doesn't diminish the strengths of Isola and if anything it's a testament to its quality that it still sounds vital for the band. In fact, arguably it's the company that it keeps that highlights its accomplishments. If we are perfectly honest the first two albums aren’t exactly the kind of start that leaves you in awe of a new band, and on their next record Kent would arguably dial their new tones up a little too much - which means that Isola stands as the sole balanced part of this first chapter of Kent’s career. It’s the strongest representative of who they were at this stage: a group of young guys who had started to dream big, who had a love for atmospheric guitars and with an almost romantic penchant for melancholy. They inhabit that space excellently, as Isola proves.

Rating: 8/10