Akkajee – Lastenkerääjä

Akkajee

The candle-lit whispering of Lastenkerääjä‘s title track invites you into Akkajee’s folk senabilites, fills the space like a spidery Egon Schiele sketch waiting to be coloured in. Its plucked spine and conversational flow maybe tip-toeing round the baby collector it sings about, an old codger that throws naughty children into his sack, a scary prospect that the duo then decide to crayon over in a bright Midsommar shindig that’s bound to chase any lingering shadows clean away.

I find a lot of folk music a bit stuck in its ways, too rusted in tradition, but I’m tasting a lot of fresh colour here, and as “Yönitkettäjä”’s introspectively contracts from the above, you get your first glimpse to what this duo can do, and what a sublime experience it is too. Based on an ancient Finnish poem about wicked spirits who keep infants awake at night, its wind-caught mobiles and slow slivering strings introspectively twist in there like an elusive lullaby. The rub of the voila vexing melancholic until its obsessive itch digs right under, blossoms on bewitching choral washes and burbling noise in contaminated colour worthy of that arresting album cover and the verdigris serpent that encircles its insides.

An eerie jewel of a sound that “Orpopojan Valssi” steals away from with a sweet shot of harmony that kitten-curls and stretches. Something not knowing any Finnish doesn’t damage as the music still manages to creature the imagination beautifully, with a warm glow weaving slivering threads through your head, a feeling which the last three tracks underline perfectly as words medusa the morass and hop-scotch that snaking dynamo.

“Hys Hys Hymylään” takes you to a mysterious land of unsolved riddles, has your ears circling like a Finnish Cocteau Twins as waves of rhythm pull at the scenery and quiver-quasar into a hobby horse strum of blurred reflectives. A sweet detour to the senses that “Äidin Itku” swims further out from, a Lisa Gerrard-eque lament for childbirth on queasy aquatics that decisively dagger into a staccato-lit intensity, twisting in willowing distends, a layered drama that salts the circle, embers mirror-written whispers that dart the headphones like possessed children.

A strangeness that’s added to by the flickering finality of “Syntym䔑s chorusing words bringing things to a bucolic close as its lyrical contours dance like crow’s feet on a tightrope. Spiralling the skimmer-chucked bite of that string centrifuge, driven into fractured dramatics, it’s a tensive outpouring that’s aptly amputated, leaving a hungry question mark neoning the words yet more.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-