Egotrippi – Egotrippi (1995)

Egotrippi is a long-standing Finnish pop rock band that became one of the country's most popular bands after releasing six albums. In my personal opinion, that's when their music started going downhill, but as often is the case, the masses like different type of music than me. Egotrippi started their career making quite catchy pop rock tunes, in mid-career they took influences from the alternative rock bands of the time and wrote a bunch of power pop songs and they finally became mega-popular when they started playing sentimental adult oriented rock. On their self-titled debut album they were still trying to find their sound and many of the songs on this album have different styles.As you can see from the album cover, the budget for their debut album wasn't that high and many of the songs do sound a bit raw.



In the latter half of the 90s I remember hearing Egotrippi's song Unihiekkaa on the radio all the time. It was their first big hit. Around that time, however, I didn't even connect that song to this band. It was only when I saw the band live by chance in front of one of Helsinki's rock clubs, Nosturi in one fine summer's day when I realised that the song was theirs and that Egotrippi had lots of other good songs as well. Since then, I've seen the band live on numerous occasion and I've bought many of their early albums, which I listened to quite a lot at least back in the day. At first their career seemed to become better album by album, until Sony took over the production. The funny thing is that this debut album was actually also released by Sony, but in between, Egotrippi released their albums on an independent record label Zen Garden, which was eventually sold to Sony. The time away from Sony is the band's greatest period.

The album starts with an upbeat pop song Ei kai taas, which has some psychedelic guitars in the beginning, but the song continues as a straightforward pop tune. It's quite catchy and definitely one of the best on this album. Next up is Yli tuhansien maisemien, which is a very typical 90s style suomirock (Finnish rock) song. The song has quite a relaxed tempo and it stays quiet outside the chorus that puts in some power chords. The biggest hit on this debut album was almost the self-titled song Egotripillä, which has some great power pop melodies that stay playing in your head. The chorus is really delightful with it's harmonised vocals and catchy melodies. Kesäpäivä has some influences from 90s style Finnish soul (which I have to mention is not the kind of soul we're used to outside of Finland). The title of the song means summer day and this song definitely is a song that's meant to give praise to Finland's fine summer days. Hulluus ovella kolkuttaa has some fast-tempo guitar riffs and quite cool bass lines. Ikkunassa takes on some more rhythmic guitar riffs. This song sounds quite a lot like the following two albums from the band. Pitääkö aina sataa has some great acoustic guitars and soulful rhythms. This song sounds very outdated as it is so clearly from the 90s. Tylsää has some interesting rock organ sounds on top of bouncy electric guitar riffs. The bass line carries the song forward. Probably the biggest leap from the normal genres on this album is Gloria, which is a proper country western song with some excellent guitars, banjos and a catchy melody. I remember us laughing at this song when we were young because country music was so uncool at the time. Now this actually sounds like one of the best songs on this album. Olet täällä has some wah-pedal guitars and sounds that seem to have been influenced by 70s rock music. The album ends with probably the most rock-sounding song Joskus. The vocals have been sung through some muffled effect.

I don't think there are any music videos from this debut album. At least I couldn't find any. That goes well together with the view I have of this album. It's a raw, early attempt at making Egotrippi a band that it became later on. The songs are quite good, but the sounds are still trying to find their place. I have very rarely listened to this debut album in the last 20 years. I don't listen to Egotrippi that much to begin with these days and this album definitely isn't among the first ones I would put on, but it's still nice to see the roots of this popular Finnish band and to recognise that they were quite good already on their debut release.

Listen to the album on Spotify.