Islaja, Ulual YYY (side A)

The strangest thing about 2007's Ulual YYY is the vocal melodies—they don't neatly reference anything recognizable.  The structures that they're in reference pop songs.  The song lengths and tonal coherence come from pop music, even as verses and choruses aren't obvious or neatly defined.  The songs are then built with a lot of cheap keyboard parts and some really nice-sounding guitar thrown in.  At rare points drum sounds turn up and give hints of propulsion, though they're so brief it's hard to be sure if they're drums or machines.  The resulting songs are as pretty and compelling as they are hard to describe.  Her voice, which seems to be singing in Finnish, sounds a bit thin and could use more body, but still conveys rich emotions when needed.  The cover image on reverse stock paper is rich with color, and the printed inner sleeve is nice too.