Pariisin Kevät – Astronautti (2010)

This Finnish band appeared from nowhere in 2008 with their debut album Meteoriitti, which became an instant hit. They have super catchy melodies and the production is very carefully made. On this second album that followed two years later, the production is even more polished. I don't normally like this clean sounds, but it is still admirable how well this album has been made to catch listeners. There's a staggering number of hit songs that will cause serious ear worms. There are only a couple of songs on the album that I could not picture as number one hits. Saying all this, when you start your career this promisingly, there's only one way to go from there, and sure enough, I think everything this band has done since this second album has been worse than the first two albums. The new albums are filled with generic electronic pop that's just plain boring.



I was introduced to this band by my back then girlfriend, whose friend had been really excited about the debut album. I was surprised to hear such ambitious pop rock from a Finnish band that I had not stumbled upon before. Of course this was early days so not many others had heard about this band yet either. Pretty soon Parisian Kevät would invade the festival stages and sell out club gigs in Helsinki. I went to a couple of their gigs and those gigs were great because everyone was so thrilled about the music. People were drunk and dancing around and just happy. On one of those gigs at Tavastia, a legendary music club in Helsinki, it was so hot that you could've squeezed sweat from my T-shirt after the show. I feel like Parisian Kevät was probably the last true fad towards a Finnish singing band before I moved away. I don't really listen to their music that much anymore, but now that I'm listening to this album, I can definitely still hear why I liked it so much back in the day.

The album starts with mellowly rolling song Matkalla etelään, that explodes into full strength only in the chorus. The following songs show their hit potential straight from the beginning. Tämän kylän poikii, Painovoimaa (Korkeusyppääjän rakkaus), Invisible man and Tulivuoria are all super catchy hit songs. Salaliittoteoria breaks this straight by being probably the worst song on this album. This kind of electronic pop sound is dominating the later albums. Imatrankoski returns the album into high quality pop songs again. It has amazingly catchy melody. Astronautti, the title track of the album ends the album in a great song even if there's some autotune used, which I normally despise. Here it's not that strong, so it doesn't bother me that much.

Pariisin Kevät also has quite well made music videos for a Finnish band. I guess that's what you get when you're signed on such a huge record label as Sony Music. Painovoimaa (Korkeusyppääjän rakkaus) music video tells a story of the lead singer as a show wrestler who practices and jogs around beautiful snowy Helsinki.

I normally like a bit more alternative sounds in music, but I also like great melodies, so Pariisin Kevät, despite of being a really highly produced pop band, appeals to me.

Listen to the album on Spotify.