Regina | Puutarhatrilogia

Most Likely To: be unpronounceable.

Not to be confused with the ‘90s era dance diva of the same name, this Regina is a Finnish electropop combo who perform sprightly tunes with lyrics in their mother tongue, which is famously unrelated to any other language on the European continent (well, except Estonian). So good luck if you’re thinking that little bit of German or Italian you know is going to give you a leg up on deciphering what any of these songs are about. Finland is wedged in between Sweden and Russia, and if the Swedes and Russkies never know what the Finns are on about, the average Yank won’t have a prayer.

This of course means that Regina’s appeal in the U.S. will be limited, since even though most people in this land never listen to the lyrics of most songs, they do prefer to not listen to them in English. This reviewer, however, finds the entire thing a delightful change of pace, since it frees him from the guilt he generally feels about rarely spending time attempting to wrest the deeper meanings out of the average Goldfrapp tune or some such. When one can’t be expected to understand what a vocalist is saying, one doesn’t have to fret much about whether he’s shortchanging them by reducing their music to “It’s got a good beat and I can dance to it.”

Fortunately, then, Puutarhatrilogia is enjoyable even without being understandable. The band performs a jazzy brand of synth-pop that incorporates a healthy amount of old-fashioned acoustic piano, while Iisa Pykäri hearkens more than a little to Rickie Lee Jones. Overall, Regina sounds sort of like The Knife going through a Diana Krall phase or something, especially on the opener “Vapaus,” which combines a very Knife-like keyboard riff with Pykäri’s jazziest vocal and liberal amounts of finger-snapping.

“Tapaa minut aamulla” kicks off sounding like it’s going to be a cover of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” before it veers into a upbeat charmer that sounds like Warren Zevon playing piano for Saint Etienne. The piano-saturated, vocally acrobatic, vaguely Latin “Saanko jäädä yöksi” was chosen as the best song of the year 2008 by a critics poll in Rumba, the biggest music magazine in Finland, according to the band’s website… and good for Rumba! I have no idea what Rolling Stone picked as song of the year for 2008, but I doubt it was anywhere near as odd.

“Sain levyt joita et halua kuunnella” brings in some charmingly out-of-tune guitar and keyboard accents to give the whole thing a mildly woozy atmosphere. “Tango merellä” likely contains the only word on the album anyone reading this is likely to understand as it is indeed a tango. “Olen häviöllä, Pauli” mixes chopped-up vocal loops with a keyboard riff straight out of Scritti Politti and tosses in frequent hair-raising shrieks for good measure.

The fact that Regina appears to be popular in such far-flung locales as Taiwan and Japan, as well as non-Finnish speaking neighbors like Sweden and Russia says a lot about them. One doesn’t need to have a clue what their songs are about to have a pretty good idea what their songs are about.

Listen to “Saanko jäädä yöksi?” from Regina:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.