Leningrad Cowboys are sort of Finland’s answer to the Monkees, a band that was originally created for a movie, but which went on to an artistic life of its own. The film, 1989′s Leningrad Cowboys Go America, was written and directed by noted Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki. A deadpan, surreally comic road movie about a Siberian polka band that reinvents itself as an outsider-art version of a ’50s rock & roll band (complete with bizarrely sculptural pompadours that come to a needle-like point about a foot in front of their heads) and goes on a calamitous tour of the southern United States, Leningrad Cowboys Go America found favor on the early indie film circuit.
The new album album is the band’s first studio album with original songs since 2000.