Putting the rock in Ragnarok: Sanjoy Narayan writes on Nordic blues
It was one of those wonderfully wet Finnish summer days — unexpected, slightly comic, and, in hindsight, perfect. Every country here has its legendary acts. Iceland’s Kaleo is four childhood friends from a town near Reykjavík who bonded over American music, recorded an album in Nashville, and went double-platinum in the US in 2016. I was on the Kuopio leg of a bike-and-train trip through the country, negotiating a queue for paistetut muikut, the addictive crispy-fried whitefish that Kuopio does better than anywhere else on earth, when something stopped me mid-reach. Music. Specifically, a groove so fat, so irresistibly New Orleans in character, that for a disorienting moment I wondered if I’d been teleported from the shores of Lake Kallavesi to a sticky, beer-soaked night at Tipitina’s. A quartet had quietly materialised on a festival stage — drums, bass, guitar, keyboards — and were playing like they’d been raised in the French Quarter. They were The Cuacuas from the nearby village of Kinahmi, devotees of The Meters and Booker T. In Finland. In the rain. …
