Kansaan Uutiset- Beautiful Dreams LP (1984)
I always felt that Kansan Uutiset were the “poor man’s Terveet Kadet,” because they both played deeply eccentric, sloppy, Finnish hardcore, having the strangest conceptions of what constituted a “song” (or a riff!). On this, their only LP, Kansan Uutiset obviously made no attempt to outdo Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon for studio magic: I would be shocked if there were multiple takes of any of these songs. But this is precisely the magic of drunk Finnish punk.
I have often argued that punk has more in common with Monty Python than is usually considered, but that this is carried over from its British origins— (the New York side of things being more self-conscious and arty). When you are actually in England, you see immediately how punk and Monty Python and Charles Dickens all arose from… these odd little people. The English are so wry and anarchic as the counterpart to their own stodgy, mannered conservativism.
I know nothing about Finland, but Finnish punk seems to have partaken of this same ludicrous, comic, juvenile spirit, although without the intellectual veneer of Eric Idle or John Lydon. Kansan Uutiset and Terveet Kadet are obviously expressions of a previously pent-up feeling, but that feeling is so difficult to characterize, and so oddly, jarringly voiced!
Musically, Kansan Uutiset manage to make the most averagely-fast hardcore song sound like a frenzied labor, with everyone barely keeping up with anyone else, the voices in the chorus wildly uncoordinated with each other, and some songs that seem to just stop in the middle. The less said about the record’s “mix,” the better.
Every song is totally winning, however baffling, however half-formed. The band is bursting with energy and creativity, so that the most imperfectly-captured expression is still valuable. At no point does one feel that these people felt in any way *obliged* to record this music, in contrast to bands today who somehow manage to sound both rushed AND labored!
Everyone will have their favorite songs, but it is hard not to love both versions of “Ankee Aamu” (it leads off both sides of the LP!), the Stooges cover rendered as “Now I Wanna Fuck Your Dog,” which turns the eerie, laconic original into something much less scary, almost gleefully karaoke-style. The next song “Cannabis Kukkakauppoihin,” for which that is the only lyric, is another highlight, rivaling Discharge’s “Free Speech For the Dumb” as the greatest one-line punk song. This “winning streak” continues on the last song, which is a surf-rock instrumental cover of a Gerry and the Pacemakers song. No kidding.
This is a great and loveable album, oozing with individuality and full of classic, demented moments. As I mentioned in the Negative FX review, this kind of bizarre charisma has largely vanished from hardcore, but in Kansan Uutiset one can see this vitality of unfettered, ingenuous creative expression on full display.
[Recommended]
