Last week Finnish pop quintet Verandan, formed in 2015 around Cats On Fire guitarist Ville Hopponen, released their long awaited self titled debut EP. It’s a collection of six nuanced pop gems that delivers both depth and variance across style and decade. We gushed big time a few months back over its splendid first single, ‘Gold In The Hills’, so much so it sat at number one in our music chart for a number of weeks.
This was soon followed up by the spritely jangling luminescence of second single ‘Short Dream’ but the real giveaway as to the musical diversity present on the EP would come from the totally different off-kilter crossover pop of ‘Follow The Money’, the third and final single before its release. Despite their immediate differences, all contain a consistent message that their on surface pop nature may not allude to but a quick look at the track titles themselves and the sabotaged EP cover is a giveaway as to thematic nature of the EP and the worldview of Hopponen himself. Neoliberalism and the results of its blind adherence to anti-people market forces comes in for an absolute rightful battering throughout. Hopponen pens wryly sobering and educative tales about its socially damaging tendencies and the ultimate futility of its end game and cleverly situates them within the extensive confines of his expansive pop framework.
Verandan is an EP in two parts musically, one upbeat and straight the other more circumspect and winding. On the former, whereas ‘Gold In The Hills’ lambasts neoliberalism’s false promises, ‘Short Dream’ reminds us how quickly and easily great expectations can be shot down by reality. ‘A Pleasant View’, sees a yearning need to escape the mundaneness of life twinned with a beautiful dose of percussion heavy twee pop.
The latter begins with ‘Follow The Money’ with its combination of sunny 60s pop and downbeat 70s prog, conveys the very real horror of a failed town that has fully realised its neoliberal future. ‘Inland Sea’, ultimately a metaphor for false hope, combines elements of pastoral pop with psychedelic motifs that would feel at home on a Jacco Gardiner record and closer ‘Sands Are Shifting’ continues that trajectory in instrumental fashion.
Listen to both ‘Short Dream’ and ‘Follow The Money’ below, while the EP out now through Soliti is available here.
Short Dream
Verandan (FIN)
From the EP, ‘Verandan’, Soliti Music.
Verandan Facebook
Audio Stream
Follow The Money
Verandan (FIN)
From the EP, ‘Verandan’, Soliti Music.
Audio Stream