LIVE REPORT: Antero Mentu & Vies Vignette
Love Potion Club
Playhouse Bar; June 5th, 2024
Helsinki Psych Live Underground
Since I happened upon Vies Vignette by accident on a night that I was gig-hopping around Helsinki, I’ve been interested in seeing them live again, but my schedule hadn’t yet allowed me to go to any more of their local events. As good luck would have it (well, perhaps luck had nothing to do with it [insert wink here]), Helsinki Psych Fest had them on the roster for the last Love Potion Club that was taking place on June 5th, 2024, before their summer break. Since I was already in town running some errands and adventuring with a friend, I decided to arrange an interview with Vies Vignette and come check out a proper full set from them while I was at it.
This particular Wednesday was a busy one, as I ran some errands and then picked up one of my new friends to go on an adventure to Alppiruusupuisto [Rhododendron Park] and Seurasaari. Everything was timed quite perfectly to allow us to get to Playhouse Bar and grab something to eat at Bites (the burger joint in the same building—side note, why have they been “sold out” of chicken for like… a year?) and get to the interview on time. I had been under the impression that the shows were starting at 20.00 but the reality was much closer to 20.30 when the first band took the stage.
Garlic & bacon burger
Antero Mentu was a name that I feel like I’ve perhaps heard floating around somewhere in the past, perhaps at another HPF event. There were five guys on stage, one on keys/synths, one on drums, one on bass, one on violin and a variety of percussive instruments, and the one front-and-center whom I would assume is Antero Mentu himself, who started the show playing electric guitar with a violin bow. The first track was slow, ambient, perhaps a bit Eastern-influenced, featuring a lot of bells. They did all look quite serious throughout the set, even if the band front was making some jokes as he chatted with the crowd—a personal nit-pick about Finnish musicians in general is that they could really stand to look a bit happier when performing, but perhaps that relates to my youth, when I used to stoically play violin in front of crowds and I, too, was relentlessly harassed until I was forced to look like I was having a good time (though, I will say that it was nice to have fun, so maybe that relentless comments were valuable after all). I think there was a shout-out to the guitarist’s mother, Pirjo Mentu (if I caught that correctly), for… making him? I’m not 100% sure. Their overall sound was instrumental and quite psychedelic, with a peppier and more groovy second track… they seemed to be following a set of songs called “Unia” (or “dreams). At some point the bassist swapped to a bass clarinet and the violinist took over the bass, so there was certainly a lot of diversity of sound during their set.
Antero Mentu
The second act of the night was Vies Vignette of course, whom I was most excited to see after having only had a brief glimpse of them in the past. At the very beginning, I think perhaps the mic hadn’t been plugged in, but they restarted after a brief pause and immediately got off to a great start and woke me up a bit after the more mellow opening act. I do really love their live sound—if you’ve listened to these guys on their album, “Among & Around” (2023), they’re very good, but they are great live. All of the music really gets elevated when they’re on stage, it’s next-level. The bassist and drummer were both really working, which you may or may not know that I’m always harping on about (never waste your rhythm section!), while there was a great ‘60s sound from the guitars and keys. Also, if you can have saxophone in your music, you probably should, just sayin’. There were a few songs whose name I caught or recognized from the album, like “House of Brass,” the spoken-word “The Rest Is Silence”—which, incidentally, had a slick drum solo!—and the trippy “Nausea I” and “Nausea II.” I very much felt like sitting back and grooving out to the music, rather than taking notes, which says quite a lot. I was very exhausted after a very long day and they were the perfect way to wrap things up. They finished the set with the first song off the aforementioned album, “Young Dreamer,” which was a great track, a solid set closer, and left me hoping to see them live again. I know they spent the day working on new material before the show, so hopefully there’s exciting new things coming from them in the near(ish) future!
Vies Vignette
As mentioned, I was very exhausted and had business the next morning, so I didn’t stick around to see Dimm (I’d love if weekday shows could start and finish a little earlier for this very reason), but the videos on Helsinki Psych Fest’s Instagram page suggested that they were a trio who were fairly rockin’, so perhaps I’ll catch them another time. Otherwise, I had another great experience at Love Potion Club and I’m looking forward to seeing who’ll be playing this fall when they start up again!
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