Jani Kaunis & The Puukot - Tyhjä Pullo (Oh Ah)

Once in a harbor city, the Finnish quarters, there was a boy who already knew. He was ten, and he understood there are two kinds of drink. One of mirth and merriment. And one with a venomous wrath behind dead eyes.

One afternoon he watched a man stumble down a grassy bank, cursing low yet steady in his intent. He entered a phone booth and called for help. The axe still buried in his leg.

The boy cannot recall if the blood pulsed or merely ran. No one cried. No one fell away. All went by the order of things, as some machinery long accustomed to crisis. Yet the pool of blood remained for weeks. Thick. Rancid. Bright red. A watering hole for flies and magpies, sticky beneath the late summer sun.

The boy grew and became Jani Kaunis. He moved north. Formed an orchestra.

And Tyhjä Pullo is no tale eager to be told. It is a memory that refuses to fade. A bottle left empty in the cupboard. A scar the width of a man’s thumb. A smear of red upon cracked, sun-bleached asphalt.

As Kaunis himself says:

“Some stains don’t go away. You can scrub. You can deny. But it is like erasing an island from a map. Best believe it’s still there.”

Behind him stand The Puukot, lined up in black coats and lacquered shoes. Ready. They say that Tyhjä Pullo is the song of summer. A song for outdoor parties, campfires, and romantic swings built for two.

And perhaps it is so. For it is rautalanka from the Arctic Circle, the earth’s frosted crown.