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Written in Folk Roots issue 184, 1998

VÄRTTINÄ
Vihma
Wicklow 0902663262-2 (1998)

At last - the Värttinä album that really does it.
      The powerful opening track (the title track which, in remixed form, is also the closer) leaves no doubt as to the progress - no longer is there a sense of slightly coy flirtation with the fringes of pop - here magnificently harnessed technology and intricate instrumental work unites with a much-tightened version of the energetic Värttinä vocal sound.
      Even though most of the material here is new-written by the band’s fiddler Kari Reiman and one of its four singers, Sirpa Reiman, this album is probably closer than any of its predecessors to the strengths of the runo-song tradition, the old Finno-Ugrian music with its limited compass of usually not more than a fifth and its winding, shifting rhythmic interplay. As Kari says “Five notes have always been enough for me!” It’s a major achievement to carry this through so strongly, not as a quaint old case for sympathy and academic interest but as a contemporary music, even able to withstand descriptions like “alternative and edgy with an appeal to kids - we think we can break them like a crazy pop band in some of the eclectic European markets”, as the manager of Paddy Moloney’s new US-based, BMG-linked Wicklow label puts it in Billboard-speak.
      There have been changes. Susan Aho, a singer and accordionist who has been showing promise in Finland with such groups as Metsänväki for some years, has joined (as has, since the recording, Pirnales and Progmatics accordionist Markku Lepistö, bringing the band to a ten-piece). Richard Horowitz as co-producer seems to have had a major hand in the rite of passage. Adding to an already considerable variety of textures and paces, including influences from pygmy vocal hocketing, there are well-chosen guests - the throat singing of Tuvans Albert Kuvezin and Aldyn-ool Sevek of label-mates Yat-Kha, and on one track the fiddles of Arto Järvelä, Mauno Järvelä and Matti Mäkelä of JPP - but the main impression is of band and singers coming together as a triumphant whole in dynamic, strongly rooted music that finally justifies the eulogies of the earlier years.


© 1998 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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