Frigg is essentially a Kaustinen band, but also a meeting between Kaustinen players and the Larsen brothers from Norway. Over the years since its 2002 debut Gjermund Larsen has found it increasingly hard to fit Frigg gigs into his many involvements back home in Norway, and he’s now left, but brother Einar Olav is still in the band, which has become one of Finland’s most world-wide travelled. The current line-up is five fiddles – siblings Esko and Alina Järvelä, Tero Hyväluoma, Tommi Asplund and Einar Olav Larsen - with Tuomas Logrén on guitar and occasional dobro or mandolin, Petri Prauda on cittern and mandolin and Antti Järvelä, cousin to Esko and Alina, on double bass. Grannen is their fifth album in eight years; rather a high production rate, but these people speak with their fiddles and new material flows out of them. It opens with a take on Ale Möller’s Potatisvals before settling into the band’s characteristic glorious mutually intuitive playing of memorably melodic tunes, a blend of new composition and trad. Guest contributions include a woodwind and brass section on Logrén’s Amurin Tiikeri (‘Siberian Tiger’), and Roope Aarnio adds mandolin to Patana Sunset/Hölökyn Kölökyn. (The latter title is a Kaustinen expression for ‘cheers’, the former a tribute to Hyväluoma’s home hamlet, Patana.) -Andrew Cronshaw, fRoots-