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I'll be honest. I don't like most of the music Finns play me. It's usually either suomipop or the hard metal Finns are famous for, which isn't my thing - Stratovarious, Children of bodom, The 69Eyes, Apocalyptica. Lordi had comedy value but now has a beard longer than Dumbledore, and the band is busy juicing their product like a housewife with hives. I don't blame them, but it isn't exactly endearing. Then there's the commercial stuff, the Bomfunk MCs and Darude that nobody talks about anymore. Of course the shouting choir from Oulu is cool but not for the hifi.
Then my good colleague Erno sends me a link to a Helsinki band called Lodger, a band of already near-mythological proportions. The site, which you navigate through a slot machine, is excellent and the videos are top quality, to the point where Lodger’s video of “Doorsteps” won the grand prize at the Oulu music video festival in 2004. Some sites claim that the band is a hoax, a publicity stunt to promote smoking, but they are mistaken. Lodger is the creation of singer-songwriter Teemu Merilä, who surrounds himself with Hannes Häyhä on bass, Antti Laari on drums, Jyri Riikonen on keyboards, and Richard Anderson on guitar. Their music has a melodramatic edge, is sarcastic and miserable with a constant humorous undertone. Drinking, smoking, rape, and murder revolve in their excellent animated videos - but over the top, enough to realise that this is a façade, cruel but funny. As if to say life’s a bitch, so it’s a good thing we can laugh.
This is a band that makes good music and their videos have already won several prizes. The last time I was in my home country, Belgium, I showed one of their video to my brother and his girlfriend – who promptly told me that she had studied this video during one of her college classes. The videos are so good in fact that they might be considered an Internet phenomenon, and, thanks to sites like youtube, a worldwide success.
Currently the band is working on a second album called “How vulgar.” In the meantime go to the store and get your hands on a copy of their first album “Hi-Fi High Lights Down Low”: the remastered version is out now. www.lodger.tv
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