Novelist, actor, producer, journalist, photographer, poet, globetrotter and former political activist – Theo Hakola combines many roles in one slim figure. But he is best known as a musician, since his powerful beginnings in the 1980s with Orchestre Rouge (RCA) and Passion Fodder (Barclay-Polygram/Beggars Banquet).
His eighth solo album Water is wet With gentle irony, it alludes to today's rejection of obvious truth—the Orwellian necessity of distinguishing between lies and reality. The album reveals what is or should be: declarations of love brimming with historical allusions, blues songs about lost love, and political tracks that encapsulate anger and world-weariness. Like a river, these pieces unite the diverse currents of his obsessions.
Hakola's style remains characterized by electric guitars and a distinctive crooner vocal style, somewhere between the sharpness of Tom Verlaine and the smoothness of Chris Isaak. His music consistently reveals an affinity with Dylan and Nick Cave – some members of the Bad Seeds even played with him in the past.
With language full of charm, sarcasm and timeless elegance, Hakola once again takes aim at our present and the politics of his homeland, as he did in his novel. Idaho Babylone (2016). Water is undoubtedly wet – but Hakola's fire continues to burn.
01 Who The Hell?
02 So Bad
03 Your Baby Blacks, Baby
04 Never Bought A Bottle Of Water
05 In A Sauna You Sweat
06 Bury Me Standing
07 Scratching The Scruff
08 Raining Embers
09 1963
10 Weak In The Knees
