Paavoharju - Ikkunat näkevät

Ikkunat näkevät is a brief collection of rare tunes and alternate takes from one of Finland’s outsider forest collectives. Paavoharju’s previous two LPs burst with imagination, extracting syrup from trees and turning it into blissful psychedelic pop and folky toy-tronica with male and female Finnish vocals. The band's edgy but gentle sound is entirely unique and mesmerizing, yet decidedly odd, like Bjork and The Sugarcubes trying to pull off a Broadcast and Focus Group record. The same sound is on offer here, but on the whole it's not nearly as intriguing as on the full records. Three tracks are reworked versions of some of the group's more memorable tunes, notably "Kevätrumpu" and "Aamuauringon tuntuinen". The familiarity of the hooks contained in these mutant versions glues the EP together, but if you've heard these before and aren't an obsessive fan, they are fairly similar to the originals. Paavoharju usually have a dark shadow lurking behind the smiling face of their songs, but the newer tracks here feature a more blissed out take on the dreamworlds they love flying around in. The title track is more of a traditional ballad featuring violin and piano as well as hand-on-heart male vocals, grounding the spacecraft for three minutes in rural, Finnish folklore. Overall, this EP is a digestable twenty minutes describing what these ascetics can do, and a lovely place to begin exploring some of Finland's more unusual groups.

Paavoharju: Ikkunat näkevät by Fonal Records