bleistiftrocker.de asked Marko Saaresto, singer in Poets Of The Fall, some questions via e-mail. These are the original answers in English.
Hier geht es zur deutschen Version des Interviews.
bleistiftrocker.de: Before releasing „Clearview“, you had your last album out in 2014. What did you do in the meantime?
Marko Saaresto: We toured and worked on „Clearview“.
Your producer described your new songs as „some are like a tender kiss and some are like a punch in the face“. Do you agree with him?
Yes.
„Clearview“ is album no. 8 by Poets Of The Fall. Which one is your personal favourite?
True, if you count in the compilation album, Alchemy vol. 1. Personally I have no favourites, or maybe it’s always the one I haven’t written yet.
For your German tour, you are selling VIP-tickets. What do fans get for it?
A mighty good time. They get to come in the venue before everyone else, and meet the whole band face to face. Funny things ensue and it’s all very relaxed and easy going. They get their picture taken with us and usually there is also time to talk, take selfies, get autographs and just generally goof around with us. The meet&greet tickets are limited, so it is an exclusive experience.
You are stars in Finland while everywhere else you play in smaller clubs. What do you prefer, big arenas or club concerts?
Well, you know, we do play the bigger venues and arenas in Finland, sure, but we actually play even bigger shows outside of Finland. I know in Germany we are playing the smaller venues, sure, with the exception of some of the bigger festivals you have. But it all varies city to city, country to country. The size of the club doesn’t matter, because you can have a blast everywhere. Of course it’s so much fun to do big shows, when you get so much energy circulating.
You are a band of six. Is it complicated to get all the different views and personalities together to make an album or to be on stage?
You can’t imagine. In reality, it is, at times, but that goes with every company or piece of work in progress on the planet. Some more than others. In my experience, we are pretty easy overall.
You have more than 500.000 fans on Facebook, no doubt one of the most important marketing tool these days. What do you do on FB to keep your fans updated and entertained?
Oh, hey, I’m no wiz when it comes to social media, but I know some people who are. They are called „some of the other guys in the band“. Usually I’m just told to pose and look pretty, or another favourite seems to be where they tell me to keep opening and closing my mouth and words come out. It’s like magic. Then all that is posted on the net. For real though, the guys take awesome photos and we shoot funny videos of our real lives and what we see and do on tour and so on, and it’s all a great way to connect and share with our fans across the globe.
You recently told „Kulturnews“ that you like to put finnish and english words together for a weird mix. Now you have the chance to give us a funny example (with translation, of course).
Okay, well this isn’t exactly proper english, and I probably wouldn’t go so far as to use this on an album track, but it’s what popped into my head when you asked. With my buddies we call it „shitlish“ and use in our everyday dialog mixed in with finnish. I mean, it’s really silly and we don’t even pay attention to it these days, we’re so used to it. So a phrase like: “ What time is it?“ would go: „How plenty is the bell?“ Just a direct translation from how you’d say it in Finnish. Another example would be: „How are you doing?“, which in shitlish goes: „What moon bone?“ The answer would be: „What’s here“, meaning roughly: „Oh, nothing out of the ordinary.“ So, there you have it. It doesn’t stop there. Idiocy rarely does.