It's New To Me: The Province Complains by Cats on Fire (2007)

Poster titled "Occupations related to household arts" by Peter Radin for the Work Projects Administration, 1938

Ah, Turku. Is it in your Top Ten List of Mid-sized Cities of Finland? It's in mine. I had a friend from Turku once, who loved the town and spoke of it in glowing terms. He also had several scars on the back of his head from getting hit with metal chairs during bar fights. Bar fights that took place in Turku, Finland. As great as it is, Turku not where you'd expect to see the reincarnation of the Smiths. But Turku's Cats on Fire have been called just that - the Smiths reborn. Or something. They get better treatment than a lot of lesser Smiths sound-a-likes simply because they are SO good at sounding like the Smiths. Mattias Björkas does a great Morrissey voice (or MAYBE he just naturally has a great Morrissey voice) and Ville Hopponen pulls all the best tricks from Johnny Marr's book of minimalist guitar tricks.

Of course, there's more to Cats on Fire and their excellent debut The Province Complains than sounding like the Smiths. In fact, the first influence that hits coming out of the gates on the excellent opening track "I Am the White-Mantled King" are the organ riff and title both referencing Felt (the band you say you are influenced by when you are actually influenced by the Smiths). Touches of other Brit-indie bands from the '80s are found here as well. The opening lyric of "Born Again Christian" references Orange Juice, and suddenly I'm noticing a little Edwyn Collins in the vocals. Upbeat numbers like "Draw in the Reins" draw on the sound of later-period Belle & Sebastian, and some of the jangly guitar leads are more Razorcuts than Smiths. Do I hear a little Chameleons? Wedding Present? But, seriously - who are we kidding? These guys SOUND JUST LIKE THE SMITHS.

Some little things belong just to Cats on Fire, though. Björkas' Morrissey-isms are filtered through a Finnish accent that does some funny things - the way he mangles the phrase "Bedouin leader" in the album's first song is pretty cute. Female backing vocals are a welcome addition found in several songs on the album. The lyrics are also quite good, although you might roll your eyes at a couple lines that come close to straight-up parody. To me, one of the best things about The Province Complains is that it's more upbeat than any Smiths album and never comes close to being maudlin.

"If You Must Tell Him" is one of The Province Complains's highlights. Starting with a simple guitar strum and Björkas' voice, the arrangement is gradually fleshed out into a full band arrangement with a nice harmonica bit and backing vocals from Jessika Rapo. It has a little bit of a country feel, especially in the corny guitar line at the end, but I don't think there's any threat of Finnish country music storming the world's pop charts. Really, like all of The Province Complains, it's just great '80s-style guitar pop. Cats on Fire have put out a second album, Our Temperance Movement, this year, but it hasn't been received as well. It's major crime, as far as I can tell, is not sounding enough like the Smiths. There's a lesson there somewhere.

"If You Must Tell Him" by Cats on Fire