Not unlike the North American folk and Americana that influences them, Captain Cougar’s music is a melting pot of European and Nordic flavors, both old and new.  With acoustic guitars, electric bass, keys, sweeping strings, gently plucked banjo, mandolin, and kantele, the Finnish quintet’s second long-player, Of Dreams Long Gone, is a lush, multi-layered concept album which follows one couple’s courageous journey from 1916 to 1963 through the hardest of lives.

Lead singer Eva Louhivuori’s beautiful, crystalline voice narrates this melancholy tale as the unnamed Finnish husband and wife meet, marry, undergo forced separation during the bloody civil war of 1918, and finally flee from their broken homeland, where suspicion is rife, to work in the mines of Minnesota.  Listen to this cohesive 13-song cycle in one sitting, with the lovingly annotated and illustrated liner notes in your lap, and feel yourself irrevocably drawn into the unfolding, tragic tale of love and hope which must end in death.  Captivating stuff.

• Multiple songs MySpace