What is it with Scandinavians and country music? Maybe it's the inherent sadness and the dark night of the soul attracts the residents of the world's northernmost outposts. Or possibly the copious capacity for drinking away the pain?
The root of the attraction remains difficult to determine, but it appears to be an affliction that's here to stay. If you don't believe me, then try both the ramshackle, Neil Young-isms of St.Thomas and electro-tinged C&W Magnet's Even Johansen dips into whenever he has space on his EPS.
Both of these are fine performers, whose love for the genre is clearly genuine rather than simply tongue-in-cheek, and by the sounds of it, the love of folk and country melancholy has now spread to Finland and one Marko Nyberg's band HUSKY RESCUE.
Not that "Summertime Cowboy" is exactly Alt.Country in the fatalistic, Handsome Family sense of the term. Indeed, it's a quite fabulous collision of styles. It's built around a sublime, whirly Northern soul groove featuring samples, impeccably funky drums, Stax-style chopped guitar and an impossibly smoky and sultry vocal from unknown 20-year old Finnish girl Reeta-Leena Korhola. Remember the name. You'll hear more from her, mark my words.
Anyway, despite its' whipcracks and "giddy up"s, "Summertime Cowboy" is damn infectious and far too wonderful to be mere pastiche, and the remainder of the EP shows just how far-reaching Nyberg's field of influence is. He's been known to wax lyrical about the likes of David Lynch and Philip Glass, and with the EP's second track "Black Umbrella" he's turned in something with the weird, drifting ambience of Brian Eno which then suddenly flowers into a structured tingle of the week even John Barry himself would surely love. Shame it stops so abruptly.
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Also included are an intrigingly disparate pair of remixes of the title tune. The Serge Santiago mix is the more radical, paring the tune back to electronic pop minimalism of the early Depeche Mode variety and dropping the guitars altogether. More faithful, but not necessarily more successful is the rather plodding Mocky mix. It's organic enough, but a little lacking in inspiration.
Still, a notable start by anyone's standards. Plus, I'm reliably informed Husky Rescue are sitting atop a quite remarkable debut album which mixes and matches styles with considerable aplomb. I don't want to jump the gun there as yet,but certainly "Summertime Cowboy" has the makings of a very large carrot being dangled. We await further shenanigans with great interest.
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