Artist: 22-Pistepirkko
Title: Drops & Kicks
Label: Bare Bones Business Oy
Format: CD
Regular Price: $12.00

Finnish garage-(blues)-folk-(electro)-pop trio 22-Pistepirkko inhabit a weird place in my heart. I’m still fairly new to the band, having been finally immersed in their expansive catalog just last year with the release of their double-CD career retrospective, and most recent full-length, the incandescent beauty that is Rally of Love. I understand there’s a certain amount of “acquired taste” in the band’s slapdash, throw-it-and-see-if-it-sticks arrangements, in the uniquely reedy voice of frontman P-K, and in the songs’ intoxicating inexactness. Eccentricities that might once in a while overshadow, for less adventurous souls, what is truly spectacular songwriting. Anyone who can sit through his holiness Devendra’s recordings can find joy within these songs, seriously. But dangit the band’s been around for a quarter of a century honing their craft, and is positively revered in their native Finland. I am feeling preachy and truly convinced this counts for something! Brilliant bands with similarly and willfully perverse and prodigious output, like 22-P’s Scandinavian brethren Motorpsycho and The Bear Quartet, only prove my point. Integrity counts.

Once I’m suitably swaddled and cuddled in the symphonic surrealism of the folksy opening salvo of “Mr. Twister”, the middle-age guy in me takes over and falls in love with the Pistepirkko’s not-so-gently tugging at emotional counterweights or hesitantly trying to plug that hole in your heart with their deftly wrought weird and rootsy balladry. Here’s two heartwarmers: the exquisite “I Knew” and the Lennon-esque “Stay”. And because I seem intent on giving away half the album, check out the album closer (actually next to last, there's a hidden track), “We Ought”, 50% haunting nocturne, 50% blues stomper, 100% Pistepirkko. Deceptively simple and luxuriously strange. How do they do it?

Remember the band’s been around for 25 years, longer than some of you reading this! And on this, their 10th full-length album, Kalle Gustafsson (The Soundtrack of Our Lives bassist and renown producer) has produced (and played bass sometimes) while fellow TSOOL mates (Ebbot sings and Martin Hederos plays piano and keys) helped out. Notable Stateside 22-P fan John Hanlon (Neil Young's sound engineer) flew over from sunny California to Scandinavia to put his hands on a handful of the final mixes.

L.A. WEEKLY: "The beats have become more sophisticated, the lyrics more nuanced, the textures richer, but this Finnish ensemble’s most arresting quality remains its giddiness…steeped in contemporary beats and seductive aural backdrops, but instead of using samples, this band does a lot with echoes, their music a jumble of recontextualized rock history."

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