This is getting spooky. There we were in the faded splendour of the Edwardian Bush Hall (built, apparently, by Irish publisher William C Hurndall as a gift for his daughter – I hope she remembered to say “thanks Dad”) luckily seated at one of the few tables in front of the makeshift stage, sharing our space with a couple of West London types. As support band Hardkandy take the stage (a not unpleasing baggy-jeaned funk soul outfit with a great vocalist) the bloke to the left of The Photographer takes out his little black notebook and starts to write.

Like gunslingers at dawn we stared at each other through dead eyes, waiting to see who would blink first. Needless to say it was the kid, seen off by my Elvis ‘Jailhouse Rock’ shirt (a real collector’s item I have to say), the debris of beer bottles that I intimidated him with, and when we compared notes at the end, the fact that I’d managed to include ‘Ian Dury’, ‘John Malkovich’, ‘The Helsinki marathon’, ‘Anthony and the Johnsons’, ‘Jim White’, ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’, ‘Seal’ and ‘homemade Thai sausages’ into my jottings, compared to his ‘Coldplay’, ‘lemonade’ and ‘crisps’. A hands down victory for the mature man I’d say.

To be sure, the single ‘New light of tomorrow’ could have come straight out of a Lynch film, but a lot of the rest of the short set wouldn’t have been out of place on a Jim White album – although there was perhaps less of Jim’s eccentric and black humour, and more bleak rain swept and sun-deprived Finnish landscapes (the band claim to produce “exquisite music to shield themselves from the bitter cold of Finland’s harsh artic winters” but somehow I don’t think they can quite escape it).

The set started with the curious ‘Good man’ (with an introductory taped monologue from hot Finnish DJ Jonathan Hutchings – well actually he’s a Welshman who’s lived there for years, and obviously – and understandably prefers Helsinki to Haverfordwest) and ended with the lullaby ‘Sleep tight tiger’. In between there was (amongst others) ‘Sweet little kitten’, new single ‘City lights’, ‘Rainbow flows’, ‘My world’ and especially for Serge, ‘Gasoline girl’, with the refrain “I’m dreaming of a girl on a motorbike”.

Overall a very satisfactory evening, a thought backed up by a few plays of the album Country Falls, nicely packaged with sleeve graphics like a cross between some of the early (and impossible to find) Ronnie van Hilversum albums and the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine. Whether you’re in a log cabin in Finland, a flat in London, or a farmhouse in France, sit with a glass of your favourite dram with Country Falls playing, and let the Atlantic waves of Scotland’s Midnight Wine slowly break over you, and the surf gently pull you back, and then push you forward, and feel, as Husky promises, ‘a warm breeze to counter the chill of daily life’. That’s my way of saying ‘please buy their album’. Ok ? - Nick Morgan (concert photographs by Kate)

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