2009

The year list of 2009 is finally complete and it is clear to me that my listening has been concentrated in a few albums. Lacrosse top the album chart, followed by a big gap down to second placed The Jezabels. When I listen to Bandages for the Heart it almost feels like the time before internet.

2010 will probably become a sort of comeback for the blog. I have some ideas I want to carry out, and it will be a very interesting year here on the blog if everything goes well.

Records
1. Lacrosse - Bandages for the Heart
2. The Jezabels - The Man Is Dead EP
3. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (LP)
4. Strawberry Whiplash - Picture Perfect EP
5. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
6. The Afternoon Naps - Parade
7. Joy Formidable - A Balloon Called Moaning
8. Grand Archieves - Keep in Mind Frankenstein
9. The Starlets - I Wake Up Dreaming
10. Burning Hearts - Aboa Sleeping

Also good: The Fauns - The Fauns, Headlights - Wildlife, State Broadcasters - The Ship and the Iceberg, JJ - JJ no 2, Immaculate Machine - High on Jackson Hill, God Help the Girl - God Help the Girl


Songs
1. Lacrosse - Come Back Song #1
2. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Young Adult Friction
3. Camera Obscura - French Navy
4. The Jezabels - Disco Biscuit Love
5. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Stay Alive
6. Grand Archieves - Oslo Novelist
7. The Starlets - To the Winter Park
8. The Jezabels - Be a Star
9. Burning Hearts - I Lost My Colour Vision
10. Strawberry Whiplash - Celestial
11. Ohbijou - Wildfires
12. Sally Shapiro - Miracle
13. The Besties - Man vs Wild
14. Metric - Sick Muse
15. Anna Järvinen - Äppelöga

The Jezabels - Disco Biscuit Love

Kylie Minogue and fellow countryman Nick Cave were deadly serious in the 1995 duet Where the Wild Roses Grow. It may well be the most beautiful moment in Australian pop music.

Ten years later, Melbourne band Architecture in Helsinki charmed concert audiences all across the Western world with shows based on the records Fingers Crossed and In Case We Die.

The huge island on the other side of the world has probably had more to offer than two admittedly very fond memories, but the Australian pop music landscape has always been a desert to me. I do not have a relationship with Australia's probably most acclaimed band The Lucksmiths, and it is telling that I only like the songs Camera-Shy and T-Shirt Weather when their recordings include eleven albums. I have never been particularly interested in Australian music, and it is perfectly logical that I did not bother to really investigate it. If I were to try to describe the Australian pop music scene, I would probably say "talented, but boring"

It is therefore so incredibly liberating to hear Sydney quartet The Jezabels invert my view of the world with disco-like piano pop which breaks my prejudices. The Jezabels make music to live to. Disco Biscuit Love appears on the band's first record The Man Is Dead EP which is absolutely brilliant all the way.

Review: Lacrosse - Bandages for the Heart

Lacrosse's second album Bandages for the Heart is really a record of contrasts. Introducing tracks We Are Kids and You Are Blind are upbeat hits from a world where the sun always shines, love automatically is reciprocal and any problems easily are put off until tomorrow. Beneath the surface, however, there is a worry which constantly interrupts the party by pointing to the fragility of life. The transition between life angst in My Stop's story of an abandoned young person's consideration of the final farewell and hazy happiness in Come Back Song #1 is an almost provocative and for the record representative reminder of how the pendulum of life balances between joy and sorrow.

At a first listen, Bandages for the Heart could be mistaken for music made for children. Nina Wähä and Kristian Dahl convey the lyrics by both singing everything at the same time throughout the record. Nina changes her voice to fit different emotional states and sings the way each song requires. Nina's vocals are consistently naive and childish independent of mood state as her voice gives the record its character. Kristian still sounds like he did on Lacrosse's debut album This New Year Will Be for You and Me and basically sings with the same style on every song.

The producer Jari Haapalainen has described Bandages for the Heart as "music performed by children, but written for adults who stagger in life". I do not know if this concept was Haapalainen's or the band's idea but it does not really matter. The important thing is that the warmth from the debut album still remains and that the playfully interjected strange synth sounds are wonderful. Bandages for the Heart could very well be the first record which survived Haapalainen's production and that in itself is amazing. Every rule has its exceptions.

Each of the eleven songs stay in memory and they all have their little peculiarities. Song in the Morning, My Stop and Come Back Song #1 are my favourite songs. You can not ignore that My Stop and Come Back Song #1 are the emotionally strongest tracks. My Stop is a painfully honest depiction infinitely far away from children's music. My Stop describes how a young person who undergoes a life crisis becomes declared an idiot and ignored by the therapist.

When I talked to the psychiatrist, she merely shrugged at me
said this thing you're experiencing, you're not suicidal
you're just a human being my friend
and everybody feels like you do anyway

But even though everything may not be as dramatic and life-changing in retrospect, the problems and feelings are completely real and incredibly stressful for the one with emotional pain.

But look at me, now look at me
with my hand and my feet on the reiling
with my heart all bleed out
I bet you did not believe me when I said that this was different
When I said that this was different

Something is very wrong when someone who seeks help instead gets stamped on. My Stop continues with a monologue in which the character stages suicide to look like murder in order to give the parents, who face the nightmare of surviving their own child, an outsider towards whom they can direct their grief and anger. My Stop is very thought-provoking criticism of the current individualised and competitive society which, deliberately or not, has lost both safety nets and humanity. Come Back Song #1 starts a few seconds later with its contagious life happiness which serves as a first-aid kit for fragile young people crying inside.

I feel very strongly about this album. If it had come a few years earlier it had perhaps been one of the really big records of my life. I have not been emotionally hit like this since Hello Saferide's and Katie Goes to Tokyo's debut albums in 2005 and 2006. Listening to Lacrosse is like for once to be understood by an emotional person with a warm heart and similar life values.

Lacrosse do not give any answers or universal solutions though. Bandages for the Heart is no key, only a consolation for the moment. Lacrosse just ask questions, as in the final song What's Wrong With Love. It is up to ourselves to shape our own future.