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Written in fRoots issue 273, 2006


VÄRTTINÄ
Miero
Real World CDRW 135 (2006)

Värttinä’s vocals have steadily improved from enthusiastic to impressive over the years since the band’s formation. Those years now number twenty-three; many bands would be on a downhill slope by now, but Värttinä is still ascending. Miero sounds as fresh as anything they’ve done. Part of the reason for that might be that this time they’ve brought in an unexpected producer, Aija Puurtinen, otherwise known in Finland as singer and bassist Honey B, of Honey B and the T-Bones. Puurtinen is a singer par excellence (hear, for example, her gorgeous vocals on Hannu Saha’s Mahla), who has recently been enticed from the wilder reaches of Finnish rock and pop into some vocal teaching at Sibelius Academy’s folk music department.
      There’s a lot of venom in the lyrics here, much inspired by the spells of tradition though mostly written by the band’s three singers with music by them and other band members. The onslaught opens at track one: “I throw off sparks, I tear from my tongue words as twisted as tree-roots, I poke the fire of hatred with my words, I hurl hate back at you”. It doesn’t let up, right through to the last line, addressed to “…pathetic worm that you are”. Is this for dramatic effect or have Mari Kaasinen and Johanna Virtanen got something on their minds?
      Certainly seems so – most of these songs speak of the extreme emotion, pain and anger of gender relations. Not drippy songwriter stuff, but with a stabbing pace and edgy vocal harmonies making a uniquely Värttinä reactivation of the language, imagery and almost ritualistic insistency of runo-song scales and rhythms, backed by an ever-inventive and hot instrumental team.
      The venom seems to turn into calm with the last track’s lyrics of caring and deep love and its winding tune, but even those, beautiful even in translation, are revealed to be addressed to a partner dead after a long illness.
      Not to say it’s a depressing album, though, not at all. The songs are, lyrically and melodically, vividly gutsy rather than doom-laden, and there’s catharsis in them, whether or not one understands Finnish. It’s well worth reading the translations, though.


© 2006 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

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

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