Irene Rible (FMA Admin)

I'll admit, my knowledge of Scandinavia in general doesn't extend much farther than my Pippi Longstocking veneration.  Although, given Pippi's penchant for ingesting magic peas, taking off in makeshift bicycle powered flying contraptions, and other hallucinogenic adventures; I can imagine her feeling very comfortable with the ethics of her Finnish psych-folk neighbors.

I think the Finnish psych-folk scene owes a lot to the spirit of childhood.  In a musical sense by their uninhibited manner of exploring the textures of sound within their songs without letting the restrictions of melody hold them back too far.  Each sound breathes freely, often droning on in fascination as if heard for the first time.  Often they even incorporate toy instruments and found objects into their milieu of traditional folk instruments and electronics.

But in a broader sense, there is something innocent about their music that is harder to find in America and makes the Finn's music particularly intriguing and I think novel for an American audience. Just like so many European children's television shows, their culture of childhood is rooted more in folklore and a natural wonder as opposed to our more commercialistic entertainment.

When I listen to most of these Finnish artists I envision dust covered puppet theatres and marionettes, all the dreams and nightmare's of childhood.  Much like Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, the music captures not so much the vibrancy of actually being a child, but the vague and faded ghosts of our memories that haunt us later.

However, I think the innocence of the Finn's music isn't so general or personal, but feels almost like a collective remembrance of pre-civilization, like the sounds of buried pagan souls resting in their safety coffins, ringing the bells up on the surface just to let us know they're not dead yet.  The underpinning of melancholy that is present in so much of the Finns' music (especially Islaja, similar to Nico's recordings before her) perhaps mourns the childhood of mankind and laments a severed connection as our species moves farther away from an intuitive state.

But the primordial innocence is paired symbiotically with a primordial dread. Just like all the fairy tales with reoccuring forest motifs, we are led to believe that the pagan forest contains many earthly delights, but don't stray too far because it can get very dark and nasty things lurk in the shadows.  At some of their most evocative moments these songs sound like what the wind would whisper into your ear as you wander deeper and deeper into the woods of your subconscious.

Here on the FMA several Finnish bands have cropped up including Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Kiila, Es, and adoptive Finn Fursaxa (she's really from Pennsylvania but appears on Finland's Fonal label on compilations such as Surrounded by Sun).  Unfortunately, I missed Islaja and others from Fonal records when they collectively toured the United States in 2005, but you can listen to their performances from that tour on Brian Turner's show on WFMU and WNYC's Spinning on Air.  A Finnish DIY cassette tape from the Lal Lal Lal label is also available to download from WFMU's Beware of the Blog and another out-of-print compilation can be downloaded from Lal Lal Lal's website.

Although the current Finnish scene claims to have no connection to their predecessor's from the Sixties and Seventies, Love Records has released three great compilations of Finnish psychedelic music from that era including Artic Hysteria, More Artic Hysteria, and Psychedelic Phinland which are also worth a listen.

While it is unfortunate that no Moomins roam our American forests or television sets, we do have an American counterpart to the Finns, with the Jewelled Antler Collective releasing mysterious, hand pressed psych-folk recordings that channel the woodland sprites of our own terrain.  You can listen to one of those artists, Thuja, here on the FMA.

I was perusing the mp3s from Bloodshot Records here on the FMA when I came across a Handsome Family song I had never heard before, a rendition of the traditional ballad "Barbara Allen".  I was interested in hearing this track as there are several paragraphs that examine this song in Teresa Goddu's excellent essay "Bloody Daggers and Lonesome Graveyards: The Gothic and Country Music" from the book Reading Country Music: Steel Guitars, Opry Stars, and Honky-Tonk Bars.

As Goddu explains, what most of these gothic songs portray is the threat of sexuality, particularly male sexual frustration, as the men in these songs always blame their female victims for being the objects of their dangerous lust, a "crime" the women must pay for with their lives.  In "Barbara Allen" the man is so paralyzed by Barbara Allen's rejection, he is sent to his death bed.  But for being such a "hard-hearted" woman Barbara Allen must die too, and so she is also sent to her grave.  Out of his grave grows a rose, but out of her grave grows a briar. As the song concludes, "They lapped and tied in a true love's knot.  The rose ran around the briar."  Finally, in death, Barbara Allen can be controlled and subdued throughout eternity.

The Handsome Family has covered many of these traditional ballads including the savage bluegrass standard "Knoxville Girl" and the haunting "Banks of the Ohio".  In both songs the female protagonists are murdered by their prospective lovers, their bodies disposed of in nearby rivers.  Lyricist Rennie Sparks wrote her most memorable reinterpretation of these ballads with a song called "Arlene".  In this song, when the man is unable to win the affection of his love interest, he breaks into her house, clubs her to death with a stick, and then hides her body in a cave where he possesses her forever.

Living in a modern day culture where the torture porn of Saw films and the blatant misogyny of Grand Theft Auto games are perversely packaged, mindlessly consumed and then sit comfortably beside the other accoutrements of middle-class living rooms, I can't help but wonder if things have changed much under the surface since the days of the ill-fated Knoxville Girl.

But if humanity has always been this awful and is only superficially better now, it comes as no surprise that the counterpoints to songs of violence and rage are religion and morality.  As Goddu's essay puts it, "Bluegrass may open the door to extreme desires" but that "makes it the business of morality to subdue them or of religion to harness them". 

This is where Rennie's songs differ significantly from the folk songs that influence her lyrics.  She doesn't seek redemption or salvation from the Christian religion, but displays a reverence for Native American spirituality and animism. These themes are particularly addressed on songs such as "24-Hour Store" where the living wander the shopping aisles more lost and alone than the ghosts that haunt the big box chain that the title refers to.  "Peace in the Valley" closes the album Twilight, describing a shopping mall in a post-human world, where "the empty shelves swarmed with bees" and "cash machines sprouted weeds" and "there was peace in the valley once again."

While there are many artists who mine the Southern Gothic legacy of country music for inspiration, there's something humble, quietly poetic, and touching about The Handsome Family that seems more befitting to rural life than the theatrics of Nick Cave or the "Denver Sound" of Sixteen Horsepower, Jay Munly and others covering similar territory.  The Handsome Family write songs in the vein of what I imagine Kurt Cobain would have written if he'd recorded more acoustic music like what we heard on the Unplugged album.  In any case, a band that can inspire such rare praise from Lydia Lunch and thesis level reflection from fans is worth a listen.