Rock N' Roll is an Old Song…

[rating:7.5/10]

Kiki Pau, a Finnish quartet whose newest album White Mountain channels Velvet Underground and T. Rex, certainly has no problem wearing their influences on their sleeves. When they originally emailed me, asking that I include their track, “An Old Song” as a free download on the site, they described their sound in no uncertain terms, citing the same influences that I mentioned above. I listened, enjoyed quite a bit, I posted the track, and I immediately agreed with their assertion.

I know very little about Finland, especially in regards to its music scene. However, I do know that listening to Kiki Pau’s new album present the picture of a musical landscape that I would be certain to enjoy… a timewarp transporting me back to a time nearly a decade before my birth, listening to Mott the Hoople while driving to a Bowie show in NYC and debating the significance of Lou Reed’s post-VU output in comparison to their 1967 debut with Nico. While listening to this album, I have a vivid image in my head of a time where I was not even present… now that’s music.

There isn’t a lot of music that I hear today that sounds anything like this. To a certain extent, I hear moments that remind me of Pete Doherty’s throwback type of sound, but the other 70’s throwbacks that have hit it big in the past few years (The Strokes come to mind most immediately) really don’t channel the spirit of the glam-era the way Kiki Pau does. There are moments where I feel some mod influence, specifically with a feel similar to The Kinks’s sound. Overall, though, Kiki Pau takes this back-in-the-day-of-glam feel and makes it something that sounds fresh.

Great guitar work, catchy hooks, and an overwhelming desire to get out of my seat and dance… that’s the best way I can describe White Mountain.

One quick question, is everyone in Finland multi-lingual? English lyrics, with a spattering of Spanish from a band whose national languages are neither… impressive yet again.

Standout tracks: “An Old Song”, “Just Real”, and “Daniel Fulano” (my personal favorite, I think)

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~ by thepaintedman on March 4, 2010.