THE LATEBIRDS
Radio Insomnia
GrandpopBy Chris Nelson
Latebird main man Markus Nordenstreng has said of Radio Insomnia
--
"Making this album was like living in a Paul Auster novel
at times. You would find yourself in a strange studio in a strange
town in a strage land, while recording strange songs, with strange
guys watching behind your back. Yet you would feel totally at ease
with all this strangeness around you, and then create something
that could never be created again."
-- and I really can't help but agree with the man.
Which is not to say that I was there with the Finnish band as they
recorded their new album in Woodstock, NY. But a feeling of twilight,
of dusk, of that strange time of day when the land is changing tone
and shape permeates Insomnia. You feel it in songs like "Blue
Horses," whose anguised, lovelorn lyrics are not so much sung
but confessed into the microphone, fusing at some point with the
fuzzed-out bassline and prickly guitar. You feel it in "Set
Free the Radio," a rollicking rock song, seemingly a message
from another decade, channelling a certain Mr. Costello in both
message and tone. And you feel it in "Without June," the
haunting ballad (and I know the term 'haunting ballad' is thrown
around a lot, but really...) wherein Nordenstreng assumes the voice
of the late, great Johnny Cash in his final days. You can picture
the recording studio, this lonely man in an unfamiliar land, a glass
of bourbon balanced precariously on the piano as he pounds out his
truths. Amen to that, and amen to the Latebirds.
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