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Written in fRoots issue 316, 2008


SPONTAANI VIRE
High Caffeine Content
Texicalli TEXCD 092

Its CDs haven’t really been promoted outside Finland, but the instrumental quartet Spontaani Vire has been quietly developing, with some line-up changes, since the early 1990s. The current members are all now front-line players in their own right, and this third album is a tour de force of creativity and variety.
      Johanna Juhola is top class, at least the equal of Maria Kalaniemi and Kimmo Pohjonen in 5-row accordion skill and compositional creativity, but very much in her own styles bridging acoustic and electronic. Her solo albums are even more quirkily inventive than her striking visual appearance, and she’s in dynamic duos with guitarist Roope Aarnio, pianist/composer Timo Alakotila, the exciting, innovative Kraft with violinist/fiddler Pekka Kuusisto, the group Troka with Alakotila and hot fiddlers Ville Ojanen, Matti Mäkelä and Frigg’s Antti Järvelä, and with Milla Viljamaa, Las Chicas Del Tango and Tango Orchestra Unto she’s taking tango to new Finnish places.
      Eero Grundström, of harmonica quartet Sväng, is the only survivor of the original Spontaani Vire. Long a noted harmonium whizz, on this album he also plays piano and classic Hammond sounds.
      Fiddler and nyckelharpa player Emilia Lajunen is in a slew of notable young bands whose albums have been reviewed in fR including Suo and Kirjava Lintu, and is one of the three dancing fiddlers in the beautiful show Silmu.
      Sara Puljula has become the session double-bassist, and sometimes percussionist, of choice with much of the current Finnish scene, including Frigg, Gjallarhorn, Tsuumi, Pekka Kuusisto and Hilja Grönfors.
      In Spontaani Vire these four talents are concentrated. Everything on High Caffeine Content is a composition by one of them, throwing around well-commanded styles from Kaustinen-style polka through east European, Georgian, Hungarian csárdás, waltz, to tango and theatre music, and it’s all strong, with no easy borrowings or pastiche, and each melody is taken to new places in dazzling, constantly surprising group arrangements.
      It’s a combo that would, with more record company or management push, be one of the Finnish scene’s top exports. I hope that happens before their multiple individual career paths take up all their time.

      www.texicalli.net


© 2009 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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Kansanmusiikki-instituutti (Finland's national Folk Music Institute).

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