VESPER KENNINGS: Wandering Suns And Harvest Moons – A Torchlit Dream Cycle In Eight Parts

Release year: 2023
Label: self-released

I’m sitting here with Finnish Vesper Kennings’ new album spread out before me, laughing at something I said in my review of their previous, first album (review here): that the band were laden full of esotericism and mysticism but not self-servingly so. It’s almost like this release winks in my direction.

You see, the release comes in a cardboard box with a pretty enigmatic cover image (see above). A bird skull in a maze. Inside it is the disc with the music, as well as four pieces of cardboard. On one side of these are mysterious images adorned with the esoteric, occult symbols of the four elements. On their flipside are four in themselves very well-made drawings of birds at dawn, noon, dusk and night. These tie in to short, fragmentary tales or scenes interspersed throughout the lyrics in the lyrics sheet.

Perhaps not self-serving, but at the very least Vesper Kennings wreathe themselves in layers and layers of esotericism, mystery, myth and allegory in what can only be a very conscious choice to lean towards obscurity. I’m not going to try to decipher these too much. Obviously it all ties in with the name of the album, and perhaps alludes to how one should (or could) approach the lyrics. But what of the relation between the symbols of the elements and the phases of day – why is fire on the flipside of night? An odd coupling – but the closing song Soihtu-unten kajoon (Finnish for “glare of torch dreams”) may offer a hint!

Let’s proceed to the music, shall we? Just like the packaging and presentation of Wandering Suns And Harvest Moons is somewhat more esoteric, mystical and obscure than the debut album – which also came with similar cards but seemed somehow less laden with internal intertextuality – so is the music.

One change is that the band has forsaken the electric guitar. Where the debut album featured tastefully used electric guitar to provide a bit of psychedelic touches, Wandering Suns And Harvest Moons relies on acoustic guitars, aided by synths (and electric bass). This doesn’t change Vesper Kennings’ expression in a drastic manner, but it does have an impact. As a result, there’s a bit more of neofolk at the fore, and a bit less rock.

But the band still remain hard to pigeonhole. Yeah, probably nobody has any trouble affixing the “folk” tag to them because of the significance of acoustic guitars – and without giving too much thought to how much actual folk music there is here. Certainly, the tender We Sow, We Reap can be called folk – somehow the mood makes me think of Neil Young’s Harvest Moon era (and I don’t know why, because there really isn’t much musical similarity). But on the whole, thinking of folk either as the American variant spearheaded by the likes of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and the likes, or more traditional European folk… this is pretty far removed.

I mean, do acoustic guitars make music folk?

And what are Vesper Kennings if not folk?

I don’t know. And I’m not saying to not call ’em folk if you feel like it. Certainly, I think it’s safe to say you can draw a genealogy of Vesper Kennings, which will encompass both post-industrial music and alternative or weird folk. After all, they did do Finnish interpretations of both Coil and Death In June on their second demo. And the flute on Our Hearts As Vessels For The Sun does point in the direction of folk.

Of course, partially the problem is that “folk” itself is such a hollow name for a music style. Hear me out: there is no folk music. It’s an artificial name for a virtually endless multitude of traditional music forms. And that’s where I find a key to describe Vesper Kennings; whilst perhaps musically not too tied to this or that tradition, it is tradition that breathes through.

It’s in how they employ folk tale imagery in the aforementioned brief stories and the accompanying drawings. It’s in their usage of traditional esoteric symbols, and the rural spirit of the photographs. It’s in how the very moods of their music evoke a wisp of romantic poetry and decadence combined with many-layered and multi-hued rustic folk mythology. To wax poetical, Vesper Kennings draw their water from the nightside well of almost forgotten knowledge and imagery, which harmonizes with some dormant part of us.

Uh, yeah. I digress. Back to the music, and let’s try to stay on track this time.

So, it’s a bit more acoustic, a bit more neofolk, but still hard to pigeonhole. Where opening track Köyriyönä and why not the aforementioned We Sow, We Reap are pretty easy to describe as neofolk, the sprawling (and, honestly, somewhat arduous) ten minute Salute The Machine, dominated by machinized synths, is everything but. But heck, as I wrote in my review of the debut album, neofolk is such a vague genre anyhow – so why not call Vesper Kennings that? In terms of fans of what music will most likely be fertile ground, it’s not far off.

Where the debut album had a bit of Irish tin whistle and country beat to some songs, and the electric guitars lent it a bit of psychedelic edge, resulting in a considerable breadth of expression, Wandering Suns And Harvest Moons is (for the most part) sonically more focused and unified. This results in an album that on the one hand has more internal coherence, but on the other hand features less standout tracks. At first, it felt like no track managed to rise above, and the album suffered from it.

But in the long run, it works more for the benefit than disadvantage of the album. In comparison, the debut album feels more like a compilation of loose songs – which might partially be true, considering some of the songs had already been released as their first demo. The songs on this album feel like they belong together, like they were composed to form this album. And whilst no song may rise up to become a focal point, there are moments of beauty, power and magic aplenty.

So, the bottom line to this rambling, meandering excuse for a review? The album is a corker. It took me a while to get into it, but each successive listen has made me think more highly of it. Wandering Suns And Harvest Moons is definitely one of those albums, which may take a bit of time and effort to get into, but the reward is worth it.

Why on earth hasn’t some label already snapped these guys up?

Visit Vesper Kennings on their official website, Bandcamp or Facebook