Disc rating|At the end of the Äyskäri album, Jaakko Laitinen & Väära Raha prove their skills once and for all.
Ethno / Iskelmä / album
Jaakko Laitinen & Väära Raha: Äyskäri. Playground Music.
★★★★
Jaakko Laitinen & Väärä Raha has been mixing together Finnish iskelmä and Balkan folk music since 2010. If our local Iskelmä springs from the land of mournful songs, the Balkan speed and purity guarantee joy.
Väärä Raha has been gigging hard all over Finland and has been wilding its audience for a long time in quite a carnival atmosphere. Even though the unbridled ball machine itself is full of hurly-burly, its music is far from just a jokey May Day ballad.
If you haven’t had time to notice the skill of the musicians live, you can check it out on the records. Väärän Raha’s seventh album Bailer has been recorded practically live in the studio, without overdubs, so the atmosphere is close to the concerts.
The brainiest the songs don’t swing quite as wildly as the best album Seemingly (2016) uninhibited charm, but not far behind.
Laitinen knows Balkan music extensively, from Athens to Belgrade and from Tirana to Varna, and it seems that Turkey is no stranger either. At the end of the day, that’s where the moody spices have been found. They are used liberally, but the base is still in the domestic style.
Laitinen has already inherited Finnish music from his grandfather From Olavi Tissarfrom a folk musician and songstress from Kauliranta.
As a lyricist, the skilled rhymer Laitinen continues, among other things Rip to Helismaan tradition. As a singer, he is perhaps the most heard Olavi Virran effect. The stage charmer laughs and the dollar smile can be heard on the record.
Born, raised and returned to Rovaniemi, Laitinen’s songs are often set in the Nordic region, and there is more Lapland in the stories. Even with Äyskär is, among other things, a song From Lapika to the floorbut on the other hand Night bus goes from Hakaniemi to Puotilan in Helsinki.
In songs ordinary people often worry, but Laitisen’s sympathy and understanding is always on their side. Laitinen uses a lot of old-fashioned expressions, but tells about the present.
It is hardly an overinterpretation to read the album’s title and opening song as a political satire about the government, which demands the entire nation to austerity talks. At least the voters should listen carefully to the hilarious song.
It quotes the old wisdom that “a boat can be in the water, but there is no water in the boat”. When the sternboard is missing, everyone needs to be fully furled. But not everyone is in the same boat.
The disk the party ends with a song over eight minutes long I’m ringingwhich is the most serious, slow and sensitive of Väärän Raha.
Serious moods have of course been heard before, for example the previous one Börekin a great song from the album (2020). Worm foodbut I’m ringing is an absolutely exceptional work of art in the band’s career.
It begins, among other things, as a poet and musician Niillas Holmbergin with a Sami pronunciation. He also sings alongside Laitinen and some a little.
The song floats and swirls like mist on a lake. In the lyrics, Laitinen says that as a singer and songwriter he reaches into a well deeper than himself and makes it clear at the latest that Väärä Raha is not just rillumarei entertainment.
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