‘You can see it in their faces / Oh, there’s no limit to their joy” goes the chorus to one song on Finnish pop duo Maustetytöt’s hit 2023 album Maailman Onnellisin Kansa, which translates as The Happiest People in the World. But scanning the faces of Kaisa and Anna Karjalainen for signs of exultation – or any emotion whatsoever – can be a challenge.
The two sisters, already stars in their native country, announced themselves to the rest of the world this winter with a performance of one of their songs in Fallen Leaves, veteran arthouse director Aki Kaurismäki’s Oscar-shortlisted deadpan comedy. It’s the pivotal scene in an understated feelgood hit that has topped many end-of-year lists, but Maustetytöt’s performance could not be more minor-key: the pair performing their song in a dimly lit karaoke bar, hardly moving their bodies nor their facial muscles as they diligently play their instruments.
In their music videos, guitarist Anna, 31, usually wears shades, while singer and keyboardist Kaisa, 30, looks glum or sits face down at a table. On their website they sell merchandise with the happy hardcore smiley, but its mouth bends down, not upwards. It’s not how joy usually expresses itself. “We are very pessimistic,” says Anna on a video call, with a blank expression.
“It’s a spirit that’s in our family,” adds her younger sibling. “If you look at your parents it’s easier to understand why you became the person you are.”
“Yeah, our parents,” adds Anna.
There’s a pause, before Kaisa says: “They are very pessimistic and laconic.”
Maustetytöt means “spice girls” in Finnish, which is partly an in-joke about the two women’s first incarnation as a band, Kaneli, meaning cinnamon, and partly a reference to the English girl group. “A friend of ours called us that,” says Kaisa. “The irony being that we are as far away from the original Spice Girls as possible. We got lots of feedback that the name was terrible, but we had this principle that changing it would be cheating.” Sporty and co, she clarifies, were not a musical influence. “I liked them maybe when I was four.”
Which is not to say that the Karjalainen sisters are averse to writing hooks. Maustetytöt are an unusual thing: a band with an anti-pop attitude that can’t help but churn out great pop songs. Their first single, 2019’s Tein Kai Lottorivini Väärin (I Guess I Got My Lottery Line Wrong), starts out like a garage-rock stomper, with a spartan drum track and a one-note guitar pulse, only to then break out into a symphonic anthem that would lift the roof at Eurovision.
Thematically, their albums could not be further from the hedonism of 90s girl power personified by their namesakes: 2019’s Kaikki Tiet Vievät Peltolaan (All Roads Lead to Peltola) may have been “about decadence and drinking” but 2020 follow-up Eivät Enkelitkään Ilman Siipiä Lennä (Even Angels Don’t Fly Without Wings) was “already more serious, about suicide, violence and mental illness”, says Anna, while their latest offering is about “immigration, refugees and war”.
And yet two of Maustetytöt’s albums reached No 1 in the Finnish charts, and the first two both earned gold certificates. “Maybe pessimism is something that lives inside most Finnish people,” Anna says. “It’s cold and dark up here, so being happy can be hard.”
The collaboration with Kaurismäki was a meeting of minds. The 66-year-old auteur frequently features live band performances in his films and made his international breakthrough in 1989 with Leningrad Cowboys Go America, a mockumentary about a Finnish rock band whose members all have impossibly coiffured hair and long winklepicker shoes. Invented by the director as a joke, the band went on to record eight albums and continue to tour Europe.
In 2022, says Anna, “we were asked to be on the jury of a student film festival in Karkkila, where Aki lives. We were going to say no because we were busy with our third album, but when they said we might meet Aki we changed our minds, because we have always been huge fans of his. It’s the no-bullshit attitude: straight movies with good plots and good actors. You don’t use any tricks.”
The film-maker returned their compliments. “He told us that in our music we say things just as they are, and that’s what he likes,” says Kaisa. The scene in which he cast the sisters may be prefaced by protagonist Ansa (Alma Pöysti) closing her eyes and dozing off, but if it is a dream sequence it does not provide any wish-fulfilment. Wearing tatty bathrobes, Maustetytöt perform a song that darkens the pervading mood of gloom and despair.
“I’m a prisoner here forever,” goes the song’s Finnish-language chorus. “Even the graveyard has fences / When my earthly turn is done / You’ll just dig me deeper into the ground.” To Anna, their music provides Ansa’s alcoholic love interest Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) with a glimpse of his future if he doesn’t quit drinking. “It is the point he realises that he will die if he doesn’t stop.” And thus Maustetytöt are harbingers of a happy ending after all.
One side-effect of a pessimistic outlook on life, indeed, is that it can positively surprise you. In March last year, the UN’s annual World Happiness Report rated wellbeing in Finland as the highest in the world, for the sixth year in a row.
In 2024, the Karjalainen sisters will bring their special brand of joy to the rest of Europe, with a string of dates in Germany, France and Sweden in May. They will be setting off from different locations since Anna now lives in Helsinki and Kaisa in Tampere. “We used to do everything together like twins,” Kaisa says. “But at some point you realise you have to–”
“Get a life,” Anna butts in, and there’s a shadow of a smile on Kaisa’s face as she completes her sister’s sentence: “Get a life and not depend on each other the wrong way.”
• Fallen Leaves is in cinemas now. Maustetytöt tour Germany from 12 May.
