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Tammerfest Festival - Tampere, Finland - July 14th, 15th, 16th & 17th 2010
The last decade in the music industry is interesting for its bright female characters. As for rock’n’roll chicks, things are a bit worse in terms of fresh rock blood and new attitudes. Recently Pearl, daughter of Motley Crue’s Meat Loaf, has claimed that she would be the one that would bring female rock’n’roll back to life. Well, have flag, will travel! Meanwhile in Finland there are more and more female artists who are getting power, experience and audiences, who are off the beaten path and bittersweetly rock’n’rollish. I managed to witness three of them, Anna Puu, Chisu and PMMP, at Tammerfest.
Tammerfest is one of the biggest and most popular summer music festivals in Finland, embracing all kinds of genres (from rap to death metal), with 200 Finnish artists participating and around 80,000 people visiting each year. It takes place in Tampere, a rather small though lively town which is often called the capital of Finnish rock. Musicians love coming to Tampere as it is close to Helsinki, has lots of high-level music venues, responsive audiences and it’s got some special spirit of rock in it which one can easily capture when going out in the evenings. During the festival the town turns into a weird mix of sub-cultures, sober and ‘not quite’ music lovers, colourful ‘emo’ teens and black leather ‘old rock’ grey-haired adults. On such a background, expensive festival beer seems more tasty and the gigs more exciting.
If I were to compile a music library, I would put these three artists under the same category: ‘Finnish indie-rock phenomenon.’ And this is the phenomenon of such a category of artists: yes, it is indie rock\pop with female vocal, nothing that original, but what you get is the Scandinavian cold beauty of the singers, plus mystery and the peculiarity of the Finnish language mixed with a melancholic spirit of Finnish rock which changes a well-known genre into something slightly but distinctively different. Anna Puu, Chisu and PMMP seem to have come from a Finnish fairy-tale; they balance between dark and light, tragedy and comedy, rock and pop with ironic calmness, enchanting confidence and melodic vocals typical of Finns.
Anna Puu left a favourable impression with me: lovely face, moves, melodies, band. She played acoustic guitar for some of the songs and danced to the rest. She was very smiley, gracious and very-very…pregnant. I guess among all my FIRP category artists she is the most pop. Check out her “Riko Minut”, “Kaunis päivä”, ”Nopeimmat junat”, ”C'est la vie”.
Chisu is an amazing genuine musician making each of her performances a theatrical one. The venue was packed with the audience singing along and catching her every move. Listen to “Baden-Baden”, “Muut” (“Others”) or “Sama Nainen” (“Same Woman”) and don’t miss a chance to see her live – it is a rare music pleasure!
PMMP have a unique music and performing style: they combine childish looks and naivety with sexuality and rock behavior, academic singing and violins with rock arrangement. I enjoyed their show at Tammerfest: each move of the singers was staged and accompanied with appropriate light and sound.
Among the songs they played were: “Lautturi” (“Ferryman”, a song about a girl who died and wants to come back where her beloved is), “Pariterpiaa” ( “Relationship Counseling”, about seeing doctors to solve some relationship troubles), “Kesäkaverit” (“Summerfields”, a song with great lyrics about being young, crazy and in love) and “Rusketusraidat” (“Tan Lines”, their first single, about love, of course.)
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