Pitchfork

Mauri Haikenen is a cheerful man in Finland's female-dominated, often desolate-sounding folk scene. A far cry from Keijo's spooky, noise-laden pastiches or Islaja's feral moan, Growing Green is subtly pastoral. Windblown acoustic guitars, flitting flutes, and melodic bass lines paint minimalist landscapes that tug at the imagination.

Haikenen's debut, Growing Green-- which comes three years after his first single, "Harmless"-- is uncharacteristically piecemeal, a premature compendium of a young singer/songwriter's scattershot yield. Haikenen is 22, but he doesn't sound it. Maybe it's the reverb talking, but his voice-- a weary warble-- is weathered beyond its years.

Whereas "Harmless" drew Syd Barrett comparisons and even placed in Haikenen's hands, as IDJ so modestly put it, "the future of electronic music," Growing Green is acoustic folk music, plain and simple. The album enters gingerly, as a lolling acoustic guitar works in the voids between distant bass rumblings. It sounds genteel, but Haikenen is feeling brassy: "You are all whores, and I hate you all," he sings. Surprising words, perhaps, but this song's strength is atmosphere. Haikenen's guitar playing, heavy yet luminous, shows a Nick Drake-ian sensibility.

Haikenen can be solitary or affable-- he undergoes abrupt mood shifts, vastly and somewhat whimsically altering the character of his voice. On the idyllic "Yellow Leaves and White Trees", he's gauzy and barely audible, following each few seconds of strumming with a wisp of vocal. "Careless Me", meanwhile, consolidates his variegated approach: as the volume builds (thanks mostly to accordion), Haikenen's voice gets lower and raspier. It's as if it has separate top and bottom compartments, to be favored and mixed as deemed fit.

"I Watch The Sky" tries too hard to find Dylan, and "5 Bright Dawn" might as well be cutting'n'pasting passages from Chronicles before it gets all lo-fi scuzzy with some electric guitar and clangorous drumming. Next to the scruffier work of a more explorative folkie like Islaja, Growing Green could seem innocuous. But Haikenen is hardly conventional (see: the glacial sweep of "Harmless", the barren electronics on "Cryosleep"). If anything, his relative straightforwardness stems partly from a diplomatic prowess that will only boost his export potential. At the album's dullest, remind yourself that the kid's just 22, and that if you sat with him round a bonfire listening to these songs, totally disarmed, you might soon be looking for a shoulder to weep on.