The Scaramangas – Don't Follow the Weak (2007)

Before getting into university, I spent one year working in a café in Helsinki city centre. We had a really nice youthful crew in that café and we regularly played our own CDs while working. This led to talking about music a lot. One of the other employees was also in a band. His band was The Scaramangas. At that time, they had only released one EP and I went to their gig when they released their second EP. By the time Don't Follow the Weak was released, I didn't work there anymore and I didn't stay in contact with the guy. I don't think I even noticed they had released an album like this. But then I spotted it in a record shop in Helsinki and I remember it being quite cheap as well, so I bought it without too much thinking, because I had liked their music back then. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was even better than what I expected.



This wasn't even the first album by The Scaramangas, but I didn't really know anything about them since the first couple of EPs, so this was really my re-introduction to the band. I bought their debut album All Is Good Now also later on, but I think Don't Follow the Weak was really the best album they ever released. It's quite ambitious by its sounds and there are many great songs on it. I was really glad to see that my old colleague's band had made such a good album.

The album is quite a typical mid-00's Finnish indie album. Most of the sounds are quite melancholic and melody comes before rhythm in these songs. My old colleague plays keyboards in the band and I have to say they sound particularly good on these albums. There are different types of electric pianos used and especially the Rhodes sounds are quite magical.

The album begins with quiet pianos in a song Exit Earth. After few simple notes, there's a great rain of synth notes that remind me of Grandaddy. The song is a great opening track to the album combining space announcements, melancholic indie and electronica. There are also some great strings in the song. This song is followed by Take Care, which really is like many other Finnish indie bands of the same era. There's something very Finnish about the guitar sounds. The organ sounds are nice. Times Will Change has kind of psychedelic latin rhythms and acoustic guitars. The melodies remind me of some 60s psychedelia. No One Cares has sharp and clean electric guitars that have become familiar from Finnish schlager music, but the song itself is quite cool. Let's Talk About it is a bit more fast tempo rock song, which reminds me of the band's first album. There are some garage rock influences in the song. Maybe has some great flute sounds in the beginning that sound like late 60s progressive rock. The whole song kind of has that vibe. Smile takes us back to dreamlike melancholic pop, which dominates the album. There are some definite similarities to Grandaddy in the synths. The title-track Don't Follow the Weak is one of the best songs on the album. The melodies are excellent and I really like the smooth mass of music in the background. Watch Out! brings out some excellent psychedelic sounds with organic sounding drums. Run, Run, Run continues in the psychedelia and there are some proper 60s hippy hypnosis oozing from the notes. The album ends with Oh Well, which again is a stylish nod towards Finnish traditional schlager. There are strange space sounds throughout the song.

There's even a music video for Oh Well. Since we're talking about a Finnish indie band, you might guess that the video is not very high budget film. It's a black and white video with various interesting photographs zooming in and out of the focus. I'm not sure if there's a recurring theme but there are lots of people in those photographs at least along with some psychedelic paintings.

I don't really listen to The Scaramangas that actively anymore, but now that it's playing, I actually really enjoy this album. It's a good reminder of how excellent Helsinki's indie scene was ten to fifteen years ago. There are lots of other albums from that same era in my record collection and it always feels great to get to present them to audiences in other countries.

Listen to the album on Spotify.