Revisit of the Week: J. Karjalainen - Laura Häkkisen silmät (1998)

Yes yes I skipped another week. I've been busy! Jukka "J." Karjalainen is a legend of Finnish rock history and one of the country's most beloved singer/songwriters. He's been churning out albums since the start of the 1980s and has somehow managed to hold onto his cultural relevance every decade: there have been brief fallow periods, but it doesn't take long for him to suddenly release a song that completely takes over the nation, re-introduces his name to a brand new generation and which becomes another entry in his long list of Finnish rock evergreens and radio staples. He's never been an innovator or an experimentalist - rather, his strength has been his relatable honesty and gift of melody, which with his world-weary but comforting voice has a way of worming its way into your soul. I, of course, resisted him for absolute yonks - in my teens I was too much of an anglophile to even entertain the idea of listening to some Finnish old fart and later in my adulthood I just never saw a…