There’s something funny about Finland.  I’ve never been in any other country where someone has buttonholed me in a pub and asked me “what are you doing here?  This country is terrible”.  He bought me something to drink – well I think I was supposed to drink it, it was actually confectionery dissolved in alcohol  - told me he was thinking about killing himself, and then put some Pearl Jam on the jukebox.  I’d hate to say that sums the place up – off the top of my head, it doesn’t mention the wonderful lake and island scenery, or their often innovative approaches to government (hey, that sort of thing impresses me). But there can be a strange mood about the place, especially when the sun isn’t shining.  Which, to be fair, is quite a lot of the year.

There’s something funny about Fonal.  A few years back it released a compilation entitled Summer and Smiles of Finland which, as you might have figured from the first para, are two things the country isn’t so well known for.  But what it is becoming known for – aside for the weird predilection for the angsty musings of Vedder and his ilk – is the strange musical diversity that the Tampere-based Fonal stands for.  From label founder Es’s churchy drones to Islaja’s intense folk shamblings to the campfire-psych of Kemialliset Ystävät to the unique stylings of Paavoharju – it has created a scene of its own right.

Speaking of Paavoharju, guess what – there is something funny about them.  Not just the whole born-again Christian family thing, although I do tend to regard the religious with the same mix of suspicion and condescension that I bestowed upon the strangely smelling man who told me on the Tube the other day that the train was stuck “in a bubble”.  It is more this: I saw them play live last year, and thought they were creepy, looking like a cult leader with a Bono complex left in charge a couple of impressionable (if extraordinarily talented) girls…however, somehow, they do make the most wonderful of records.  With those entrancing female vocals (which can veer between operatic and vaguely middle-eastern at the drop of an umlaut), battered folk guitars, swelling organ (Whoah! Put that away!) and ghostly decayed-tape piano all subsumed in a crackling static which swirls like Karelian drizzle (as on “Pimeankarkelo”), the magical Laulu Laakson Kukistu even beats the mark set by Yha Hamaraa.  Funny that.

Listen to more and buy it over at Fonal.