Husky
Rescue |
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MP3: City
Light
Video: Summertime
Cowboy
A lot of music seems inextricably tangled up with its place of origin. Perhaps none more so than that from the recent spate of Scandinavian artists, including Sigur Rós, Mum and Efterklang, the press for all of whom will inevitably include the phrase ‘glacial beauty’.
Having recruited 20 or so of his Helsinki-based mates to flesh out this immaculately-crafted debut, Marko Nyberg, the Finnish multi-instrumentalist behind Husky Rescue, must now be added to that list. I tried to resist - I really wanted to hear a dusty, arid twang in these guitars, humid tribal rhythms in this percussion - but there’s no getting away from the fact that this is an album of unremitting and all-encompassing, well, glacial beauty. Indeed, Husky Rescue themselves, whose homepage greets you with images of a wintry wonderland, and likens their music to ‘the first snow on the ground’, seem resigned to their fate. In case there was any remaining doubt, the official bio goes on to insist that ‘every track is designed to be a warm breeze to counter the chill of daily life’.
Fortunately, the ten songs here, with their wide array of guest vocalists and instrumental performers, transcend any cliché. The first thing to strike you about the record is the numerous different voices that it binds together. On the opening ‘Sweet Little Kitten’, Emma Salokoski’s fragile whisper seems barely there, but before you can say ‘Susanna & The Magical Orchestra meets Mum’, Reeta-Leena Korhola is dripping her sugary voice all over the super-infectious melodies and toe-tapping, warped disco of ‘Summertime Cowboy’. Elsewhere even the heavily accented male sing-speak of ‘Sleep Tight Tiger’ seems, oddly, to enhance rather than detract from the album’s cohesion.
One of the great strengths of Country Falls is the rare balance it strikes between a consistent, unified tone and the variety and individuality that characterize individual tracks. While the aforementioned ‘Summertime Cowboy’ casts its spell immediately, the chilled-out hooks of ‘New Light Of Tomorrow’ and ‘My World’ embed themselves deeply over repeated listens, outgrowing their Royksopp and Air references through the gradual revelation of miniature details. Later, ‘Rainbow Flows’ digs itself into a lazy, psychedelic groove, sounding like Jefferson Airplane at half speed.
The glue that binds all of this together, of course, is Nyberg himself, and his painterly approach to the ambient electronica that holds down the best moments on this album. This can be seen in the painstaking attention to detail applied to the gently meandering ‘Sunset Drive’. Amongst the different sounds that emerge and recede throughout the track’s four minutes are gently crunching drums, soft ‘ah ah’ vocals, a pinging synth-pop melody, quiet acoustic picking, cascades of cymbals, a distant ghostly slide guitar, a whole menagerie of keyboard effects, and something that sounds suspiciously like an electric jug. It’s got ‘overlooked instrumental album track of the year’ written all over it, and we’re still only in February.
Somehow both one-man band and sprawling collective, Husky Rescue have concocted a distinctive atmosphere all of their own over the length of this entire debut. By turns drowsily hypnotic and gergeously cinematic, Country Falls will help keep your ears warm through the rest of this winter.
Nick Fawbert - 03-03-2005
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