Itkeva Tytto
Meri
Kaakao Records
By Jose Fritz
Anyone that knows José knows me as a bastard music critic, a child-hating heathen that slanders out of both love and malice in equal shares. Last year I wrote up Ljova and the Kontraband and slandered Itkevä tyttö out of love. The reference was fair, and in the passage of time I even forgot I had done so. Despite this, they press-serviced me their new album Meri (The Sea.) I decided to write it up —there are never enough umlauts in life.
First, let us answer the basic questions. Itkevä tyttö translates roughly to “a crying girl.” Meri is their fifth album since their inception in 2003, a frantic release schedule for any band, hard jazz punks or not. Their self-description of punk is undeniable, but their jazz ardor is more elusive. Most songs are in 4/4 time lacking the awkward time signatures of traditional jazz but maintaining at least the flair of early Archie Shepp. Their streak of melodrama reminds me of the Lounge Lizards but they lack a horn section. The rock structure makes them more conventional than both but their world lies somewhere between Shepp’s greasy keys and the spit valves of the Lounge Lizards.
Meri is even more of an epic rock record then their previous releases. It mixes slower dark ballads with a scant few bone crushers. This is not Ben Folds Five: this is heavy shit. They slow the song down, they mute their strings, and depress the keys gently, to create an ever increasing gap between the calm and the storm. The title track closes out the record as the epitome of epic arena rock. At its most docile low the song consists of cymbal wash, piano chords, and quietly mumbled vocals—hushed like Chet Baker, the shy voice gently crooning. At its peak the noise has build up under a repeating theme in layers of guitar noise, synthesizer and analog distortion like sedimentary rock. At the end the manic pounding of a dissonant chord has stopped in favor of the main theme repeating in a jagged cycle spaced apart with a missing beat.
They have upped the ante in terms of the drama that can be expressed in rock music. Our emotional reactions to music are fundamental but barely understood and hardly quantifiable. Why does a minor chord feel sad and a major chord feel happy? Is it social conditioning? Is it biologically sacrosanct? Alas, we do not know. Itkevä tyttö knows enough to manipulate it, the songs rise and fall, reaching disturbing highs and distressing lows. It’s a range of emotive arrangement more often reserved for post classical orchestras. In 1975 this wouldn’t have been called punk jazz, we’d have called it rock opera.
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