Year: 2025
Label: self-released

After their rather ambitious album cycle known as the Terrestrial Vortex Trilogy (Songs Of Verdant Bone, Wandering Suns And Harvest Moons and Eldritch Winter), Finnish Vesper Kennings grace us with what is quite easy to see as an in-between work. Although six tracks and 30 minutes of music is almost album length.

There’s a hint in the name: to poach is to (illegally) hunt or capture an animal. I’m not going into the legalities at play here, but for this release, the Finnish group have gone out borrowing both tunes and lyrics. That, instead of any remarks on quality make this feel like an interim work.

Three of the songs on this release have been borrowed from other performers. Reducing them to mere “covers” feels a bit unjust, though. In all cases, Vesper Kennings have more or less reimagined and reinterpreted the music, as well as translated the lyrics. The other three songs are borrowed poems set to original music.

Starting with the borrowed songs, if one didn’t know, one might mistake these for originals. Take The 13th Disciple as an example. It is based on one of the big classics of Finnish rock music, Mana Mana’s Maria Magdalena, a song familiar to yours truly from decades back. It doesn’t sound like the original. But then again, it does. But doesn’t.

Of course, performing a heavy rock song with acoustic instrumentation changes the nature of a song. And rewriting the lyrics in another language also alters the nature of the song. But the reimagining runs deeper. Though some melodic correspondences remain, to a considerable degree Vesper Kennings have created the classic anew.

The same applies to the two other reimaginings: Jeanne d’Arc, originally Leonard Cohen’s Joan Of Arc; and Shores Of Unknowing, originally J. Karjalainen’s Verinen mies.

The three original tunes feature as lyrics poems by British classic G.K. Chesterton and Finnish poet Uuno Kailas. As an interesting wink of the eye, one of the poems of the latter is Kahdet silmät, also known as Silmien vaihtajat. Aforementioned Mana Mana was preceeded by a band called Silmienvaihtajat, who wrote many of the songs later recorded by Mana Mana. Vesper Kennings’ trademark clever intertextual references at play again.

Own or borrowed, Vesper Kennings succeed in making all of the songs sound like their own. They find a sort of, uh, innate kennings-ness in each of the tracks. This ranges from the dreary, acoustic twilight lurch of Pyramiidilaulu via the tender, fragile emotion of The 13th Disciple to the energetic psychedelia and screeching electric guitars of Sword of Surprise. The latter is perhaps even a bit uncharacteristic for the band in its electric rocking – and yet, they manage to make it their own. It rises to become the strongest moment on the release, certainly much thanks to how different it is.

I realize that calling something an “in-between release” risks making the release sound like an afterthought or a thing easily passed. Padding, if you will. But let me assure you, that’s not what Poacher Songs For The Bonewhite Bailiff is. This doesn’t sound like yesterday’s leftovers or a meal quickly put together from scraps.

What I mean, apart from the obvious fact that this has a shorter running time than the albums, is that this is a self-contained whole, not part of Vesper Kennings’ next cycle. Whatever that may be. It’s more a collection of individual songs than an arch. And, granted, maybe the nature of the songs means this isn’t the most essential release from the viewpoint of a casual listener. Maybe this isn’t the first Vesper Kennings release a new listener needs to check out.

None of which is a comment on the quality of the material on this release. Perhaps this can be labelled a “lesser” release for reasons outlined above… but qualitywise, this is as strong as ever. As a stepping stone between two cycles or larger arches, this is a more than appeasing “palate cleanser.”

Visit Vesper Kennings on their official website, Bandcamp or Facebook