Fink is an enigma, a mystery – but he’s not trying to be.
With his new album out now, Fin Greenall’s songwriting is still best known (in Britain, at least) as a footnote to his electronic career. Yet across four albums Fink have demonstrated their flexibility, their durability and also how a real emotional impact can come from little more than vocals and the barest of instrumentation. Handled by Ninja Tune, new album ‘Perfect Darkness’ is littered with the kind of throwaway remarks that most songwriters would base an entire career around.
An overwhelming, enthusiastic personality Fin Greenall’s voice ripples down the phone in his first interview of the day. “We didn’t want to do the same thing again – not that we didn’t love it, we just wanted to do something different. We started to write the songs backwards, we did a lot of jamming in my loft (which I recorded the first three albums in, give or take). It took us into more of a jam zone than a recording zone” he insists. “We just recorded everything, which is something I know from working with bigger artists as a songwriter – they literally record everything. You just never know when something’s gonna pop out. We taped everything and then I would take the best eight bars of a 20 minute jam and start writing on it.”
Fink began life as a solo venture, augmented by a full band for live performances. Success has led to progress, with Fink now a more cohesive, creative entity. Working on ‘Perfect Darkness’ the trio began to gel as a songwriting unit. “I did it all backwards. Very much band led, very much three people contributing to the songs rather than me writing it and then the boys colouring it in for me. It was the other way round, and I think the album has come out sounding much more solid than the others because the others are very much band-minded” he says.
Taking more and more of a back seat during recording, Fin Greenall even allowed an outsider to take charge of production. “You know what? It was great not to worry about limiters and compressors, or whether we can borrow a mic from Bonobo again as we don’t have one for the snare drum” he laughs. “It was really nice to just rock up at ten, everyone’s happy and a runner can go get me a coffee and a donut. Some of the more spoilt bands get six months or a year to do that and it would drive me insane because you’re in your own little world. It’s like being on an Indian reservation, cut off from the outside. If I did that for a year I think I’d go mad. Even speaking to your loved ones, after a week you don’t even want to speak to them because everything just seems so irrelevant. Your life becomes: get up, get high, record all day, record night, go home, have a beer, watch the telly. This time we were sharing an apartment in LA so it was full on.”
Honing their skills as a unit during a massive, year-long tour Fink were able to approach ‘Perfect Darkness’ with no small degree of confidence. “I think it’s a reflection of the fact that our gigs are getting bigger so we need bigger material. By that I don’t mean Coldplay style stadium rock I mean songs which can fill the space. It doesn’t have to be up-tempo or aggressive, it just has to be awesome!” he says. “I don’t think this album is perfect by any means, but I do think it’s the best album I’ve made. There’s a few tracks on there I struggle to have a decent relationship with, but that’s what’s good about having a band – it’s not just up to me. I don’t want people to think of us as a live band that puts out records, but everything has happened so fast.”
He’s not exaggerating. In total, Fink have released four records in five years with each member contributing to side projects. Clearly on a roll, Greenall’s enthusiasm for what he does is palpable. Brimming with energy, it seems that the songwriter has an overwhelming need to do something, anything with his time. “If I just worked as an estate agent for the past seven years then I would have had no material. But you know what? I was a DJ for seven years and before that I was an electronic producer at University and before that I was a traveller. So my life has never really stopped” he explains. “As soon as I could become a waiter and save up enough money I bought my round the world plane ticket. Well, it was a bus ticket which is a bit more hardcore. At 18 I packed my rucksack and buggered off to North America for three months, just because I thought: one it’s that easy, you just need money and then you can go; two, the world’s a fucking massive place. I went to the East for the first time last year, then we went down to Oz and also South Africa. For music to take you to these places is so cool, and so intense. I think I’ve got a lot of material from a life lived hard. It’s been really cool, man.”
Preparing for their latest tour, Fink are aiming to finally crack their homeland. ‘Perfect Darkness’ finds the band with a cult following across Europe, yet little to no acknowledgement in the UK. Teaming up with audio-visual company 59 Productions, the band come equipped with a visually striking stageshow. “The material is quite intense so we can’t have a really fun time up there. We wanted to give people more to look at, which is a better justification of three guys with their heads down. There’s loads of stuff to look at and be included with” he explains. “It’s been really interesting as they’re just in a totally different league. They did Jonsi’s tour which was full on, a fucking motherload of money with a huge rig and an arty style. I think Fink is a more intimate beast than that. I have absolutely no idea why they want to do it but they do, bless ‘em.”
Set to launch this summer, the Fink tour sees 59 Productions battle with a tiny budget. “I think they really enjoyed the challenge. It’s been fucking great, they’ve definitely been next level. The whole theatre thing is a different level. Like the time frames are totally different man, in theatre you’re going to get a year and a half to prep the situation, in music you could be playing Paris in two weeks. The typically kneejerk music industry style. I really hope it works out this summer. The whole stage set folds down into two boxes which you can fit onto a trailer and it’s just incredible to see it concertina down. It looks like a truck-load of stuff. It’s made from all these fibres, it’s real grown up stuff man it’s wicked!”
‘Perfect Darkness’ is out now.