New album from The Bablers (Finnish indie pop veterans) "Like The First Time" out April 25 from Big Stir Records
Finnish power pop veterans THE BABLERS and BIG STIR RECORDS can now announce the album release their fans have been waiting for: the new and definitive edition of the band's LIKE THE FIRST TIME, long out of print and previously only available in Japan and Finland. Featuring a new track sequence and freshly remixed and rearranged tracks never before heard anywhere – and no fewer than six hit indie singles from the past three years – the album sees release on CD and streaming worldwide on April 25. The CD edition is up for pre-order.
The story of THE BABLERS has become much more widely known outside their native Finland in recent years for good reason. It's been over forty years since the band came together as teenagers in the late '70s and took Finland's nascent power pop scene by storm with their debut album WHAT'S ALL ABOUT and its hit title track. For decades afterward, they remained a cult favorite among power pop aficionados worldwide until the surprise release of their acclaimed 2021 reunion album PSYCHADILLY CIRCUS won the band – in their longest-lived and definitive lineup of leader, singer-songwriter and guitarist Arto Tamminen, drummer Janne Haavisto, bassist Pekka Gröhn and guitarist Hannu Pikkarainen – a much broader and long-deserved audience of fans in the indie pop world. Those bookend releases tell a remarkable tale in themselves, but what keen-eared listeners have been slowly discovering since then is that the amazing story of THE BABLERS has a secret middle chapter... one that is about to be revealed at last.
The clues have been all over the indie airwaves since 2022, shortly after PSYCHADILLY CIRCUS bowed to near-universal acclaim, as a series of new singles from the band began to emerge and captivate the ears of the band's new fans. The indie hits began with “You Are The One For Me” (chosen by Stevie Van Zandt as The Coolest Song in the World This Week on SiriusXM's Underground Garage) and “Holding Me Tight Tonight”, followed in 2023 by “Mr. King” and “Thinking Of You”. Each found its way onto Top 10 charts on terrestrial and online radio in the US, UK and EU, paving the way for this year's “Together Forever” and the wonderful surprise of the beautiful and brand new “Where The Wind Blows Free”. Between them, they've revealed the band's unique versatility, varying in style from muscular pure power pop to highly sophisticated, groovy and infectiously catchy pop. Along the way, the press releases and social media posts from the band have teased the album from which these tunes originate: LIKE THE FIRST TIME, a lost treasure hidden in plain sight for those curious enough to check Discogs, but never released on a global scale until now.
Originally issued only in Japan in 1998 by EMI, the album's first hit single “You Are The One For Me” received substantial airplay on Japanese national radio. Songs from the album were featured in TV commercials for the insurance company Nippon Life, Ford Motor Company and the Foreign Ministry of Japan. The next hit single “You Are The One For Me” became a karaoke favorite and is still widely heard in karaoke bars in Tokyo and elsewhere today. The album LIKE THE FIRST TIME would go on to enjoy a Finnish release in 2000, and its songs would soar to greater glory still in the band's homeland: “Together Forever” was the winner of the Finnish Grammy Award (Emma) for Song of the Year in its Finnish language version, and two Finnish megastars, Samuli Edelmann and Vesa-Matti Loiri, recorded versions of the unforgettable ballad “Where The Wind Blows Free” under the title “Palava Pää”. But the forthcoming reissue of LIKE THE FIRST TIME is the “first time” the album will be available to a global audience, making it a debut release to most of the indie pop, pop rock, power pop and classic rock fans in the world.
And what an album it is. Packed with the six now-familiar hits and eight more pop-rock gems cut from the same melodically shimmering cloth, it showcases THE BABLERS at a mid-career peak between their boisterous beginnings and the mature masterclass of PSYCHADILLY CIRCUS. Adding a heavy dose of Byrdsy jangle to the ever-present Beatles influences, the band produced a late-20th Century masterpiece that, had it been more widely distributed, would have been spoken of alongside the finest of that era's power pop revival (think Fountains Of Wayne, Sloan or The Wondermints) and the UK greats of the Britpop era (Supergrass, Teenage Fanclub, and even Oasis). Beyond the big-in-Japan tracks and the recent radio hits, it boasts more undiscovered classics: the pure '60s pop-rock throwback “One Of Those Dreams”, the sumptuous string-laden “Sometimes”, the Who-inspired “Could It Be You”, the live-in-one-take wonder “That Little Something”, and more.
Band leader ARTO TAMMINEN, who wrote and sings lead vocals on every track here, describes THE BABLERS' approach from the beginning through today, as gloriously displayed on LIKE THE FIRST TIME: “We've always been a no-nonsense pop rock band with an attitude. What you hear is what you get. If you hear drums, guitars and pianos, they are real drums, guitars and pianos played by the members of the band. No autotune, no samples, just 100% genuine handmade organic pop music. THE BABLERS always have the song at the center... everything for a good song!”
Reviews and fan reactions to the nearly-half of the album in release as singles bear out the success of that formula. And very soon, the wait will be over as LIKE THE FIRST TIME makes its bow on the global stage, and the band's full catalog will be available everywhere at last, confirming THE BABLERS as one of the all-time great pop rock groups of any era, anywhere. We at Big Stir Records can't wait for you to hear it.
