By Keith Walsh
The prog music of this Finnish band is so good. Using mostly odd meters, melodies that lean towards pop rock, stellar performances, and pristine production, Pennies By The Pound are set to test the limits of popularity that a band located in Finland can achieve throughout the world. In an email exchange, I chatted with vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Johannes Susitaival about the new single “Burning Wish,”, the upcoming album, and prog rock in Finland and beyond.
PCB: Not knowing much about the Finnish music scene, where does Pennies By The Pound fit in? Is Prog relatively an outlier there, or is Prog kind of a thing in Finland?
Johannes: Nah, nowadays prog is very much on the outskirts here. Actually, any music sung in English is pretty much not on the forefront from the get-go. There is a history for big progressive rock bands from Finland in the seventies (Wigwam and Tasavallan Presidentti) which were known in the UK and elsewhere abroad, and there is one quite well-known band in the genre nowadays (Von Hertzen Brothers), but it’s not big by any sense of the word.
PCB: Arrangements by Rauli Eskolin are so elaborate. How does the band go about arranging and composing? How much occurs on computers and paper, or does it happen with jams?
Johannes: This is something that has changed from record to record. The first EP we did in 2018 came together mostly by way of jamming, then our debut album last year was a bit of that and a bit of just me piecing the songs together at home. The upcoming album (including Burning Wish) is again a bit different, pretty much everything arrangement-wise was done by me and Rauli in the studio at the time we were recording the drums, we kind of went touch and go and nailed the arrangements just at the last minute before recording. It was a fun process, I tried to kind of capture the feeling of all these classic bands spending months at the studio and in the end coming up with something spontaneous.
PCB: How easily does writing in odd meters come? Is it a more deliberate approach or does it happen more organically? I see you are the drummer, so that plays a role for sure.
Johannes: It’s true that I’m the drummer, but very rarely I write with the drums in mind. I tend to write on the guitar or the bass, and these time signatures just come from somewhere along the chord sequences or melodies that I do I guess. There has been an odd time when I’ve deliberately thought that “OK now I want to do something in 9/8” or whatever, but that’s not common.
PCB: When you play live are you a singing drummer, or do you add someone? (If you haven’t played live yet, what are your plans?)
Johannes: There’s a live drummer. We actually haven’t had much of a chance to play with a full band yet because of the happenings of the last few years, there’s been a couple of semi-acoustic shows without drums. But we’re planning to start playing proper shows later on this year.
PRB: Prog often delves deeply into human psychology and social issues. How would you describe the philosophical stance of “Burning Wish” and the band’s philosophy in general?
Johannes: I’d say our lyrics have always been really concerned about society and politics, mostly about the distribution of wealth and inequality issues. If you ask about a specific philosophical stance, I’d have to say it’s a kind of cynical optimism for humankind, if that makes any sense! I totally agree that prog rock in general often does concern itself with quite complicated issues, and we’re no exception.
PCB: The musicianship on works by Pennies By The Pound is so outstanding, I feel like you’re surrounded by epic talent. How did you meet your band mates?
Johannes: Thank you! We’ve all been playing together in different bands for years. Vesa (the lead guitarist) I started playing with way back in 2007 I think, and Tomi (bass) and Alexander (rhythm and lead guitar) both around 2010. Alexander I knew from my childhood already, but I met Vesa and Tomi pretty much just randomly, while looking for people to play with. We’ve had something like 3 or 4 different bands between ourselves with different lineups (including other people not in Pennies by the Pound), so playing together comes quite naturally.
PCB: The synth work and guitar work on “Burning Wish” is amazing. Is the synth intro by Rauli? How about the solo? And the second guitar solo is also incredible. Is that Vesa, Alexander, or you?
Johannes: Most of the synths are actually by me! Rauli did some background synths here and there, and some bass pedals if I remember correctly. The guitar solos are all Vesa, Alexander doesn’t play solos per se on this album, although he plays some lead lines in several songs.
PCB: What kinds pf synths are you using?
Johannes: The synths are all done with Diva U-he, which is a really good software synth trying its hardest to be a classic analogue hardware synth! We were going for sounds which mostly mimic things like the Yamaha CS-80 as well as the Prophet and Oberheim synths, used by Genesis and Rush for example on their early 80s albums. We have a good selection of old hardware analogue synths that we can use as well if we wish, but to be honest it’s so easy to do it with software nowadays that it’s much less of a hassle, recording-wise.
PCB: Johannes, how did you make the transition from punk bands and how do punk guitar sounds, attitudes and melodies inform the songs in Pennies By The Pound?
Johannes: We actually played in the same punk band with Tomi (the bass player) for 10 years, from 2010 to 2020. But to be honest, I never was that much of a “punk” guy, I mean there’s a lot of punk music from the Sex Pistols and the Ramones to Discharge and NYC hardcore that I really love, but as a player I never was that much of a punk rocker. I guess I’ve always been more of an “90s alternative rock” kind of a musician, and that’s something that influences PBTP much more than punk. I kind of drifted into that punk band back in the day, and it was fun while it lasted, but I’m doubtful I’ll ever seriously play that kind of music again.
PCB: What are the names of some of the punk bands?
Johannes: Our main band was first called All Over Maniacs, then just A.O.M. You can find that on Spotify etc., we made five records (some of which were maybe more metal than punk).
PCB: What kind of electric guitars do you use?
Johannes: I like to play the Telecaster, that’s my main go-to guitar. I also played a bit on the upcoming album with a great custom Epiphone Firebird with Gibson pickups. Vesa pretty much always plays his trusty Reverend Slingshot Custom, that’s a big part of his sound and he’s been playing that for as long as I know. Alexander nowadays plays a Gibson Custom R0 1960s reissue Les Paul, which is a big part of his sound as well.
PCB: Mark Gardener mastered this in Oxford. Where was it recorded and where is the album being recorded?
Johannes: The album has been recorded in two studios in Finland, both near Helsinki. The first one being E-Studio in Sipoo, which is right now pretty much one of the best studios you can get in this country, and the second one being Soundtrack Studio in Porvoo, which is an older, more ‘cozy’ place in many ways. We tracked the drums in E-Studio and the guitars in Soundtrack, and we’re doing the vocals at the producer’s home studio.
PCB: Can you tell me more about the themes of the upcoming concept album and how this single represents it?
Johannes: Well, to be honest the last time around on our debut album (Heat Death of the Universe) I feel I kind of overexplained the loose theme around it, and in the end I kind of felt people were reading too much into it at times. But let’s say that it’s an abstract story about love and politics, there’s a boy and there’s a girl and there’s all sorts of shenanigans happening in their lives. It’s all about the society that’s around them and how it’s affecting and/or affected by their lives and their actions.
About Burning Wish, I can tell you that as there’s a chronological aspect to the story as well (there’s things happening in the past and in the now), Burning Wish represents something of an “explanation” of the story that’s unfurling within the record. I’ll let you fill in the blanks!
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