Fink

Fin Greenall, the central figure behind Fink, has gotten to his home in Brighton, England at 5am this morning. This is after six weeks of touring, and he is wired. He has a chicken cooking. He is ready to go into the studio do to some remixing. And he is feeling very gregarious.

Greenall is used to the road. Usually accompanied by drummer Tim Thornton and bassist Guy Whittaker, with himself on guitar and vocals, his maiden voyage was making the rounds with Zero 7 playing to thousands—and winning them over in the process. On the other end of the spectrum, Greenall has gone out on his own armed with just his guitar, voice, and songs, and still stunned audiences.

“If I suck, it’s going to be obvious,” says Greenall of these solo shows. “There’s nowhere to hide. If you have a song that’s not very good, it’s like it’s got a big siren on it, a flashing light going, ‘This song is not very good.’ You could be a crap guitarist and a shit singer, but if the song is good, it will be great. Because I am on my own on the stage, at least I’m not lying to you.”

While Greenall’s songs, including the ones on his latest full-length, Distance And Time—a close follow-up to 2006’s Biscuits For Breakfast—stand on their own, having the support of Thornton and Whittaker, who have been playing together since they were 16, and with the former being a metalhead and the latter being an indie rock kid, and Greenall himself an acoustic soul aficionado, the combination that comes together is quite unique. Still, having your first gigs be the massive ones with Zero 7, where very few people know you, you are squeezed at the front of the stage in between elaborate production paraphernalia, and you haven’t had the opportunity to do a soundcheck is a little intimidating.

“When I began this whole live music adventure, my dad told me, ‘You’ve got to play to the people that are listening,’” says Greenall. “It’s good advice. Don’t try and win over the people that aren’t listening, play for the few that are, and trust me, you’ll have a better gig. My dad told me that during the Zero 7 tour when it was killing me. Those gigs were brutal. As soon as my dad told me that, we weren’t fazed anymore.”



The rawness of Distance And Time can, in part, be attributed to extensive touring. It’s live nature is due to it essentially being recording live over a period of three weeks, since the majority of the tracks had been road-tested during the live shows. For the first time Greenall has handed the production reins over to Lamb’s Andy Barlow, who, also for the first time, is producing a band other than his own.

“Ambition doesn’t necessarily come easily to someone like me who has deliberately spent his musical life signed to an underground label that’s all about the music and not about the hype,” says Greenall. “[Barlow] allowed us to experiment and try different things. It is a different perspective for both of us. He’s a perfectionist control freak and we’re very much like, fuck it. Because I’m on an indie and there’s no pressure and no worry, we can be very real and exactly what we want to be. No one’s given us a million quid. We don’t have to pay anyone a million quid back. Being ambitious is something [Barlow] helped us deal with.”

Since the completion of Distance And Time in 2007, and after having honed his chops even further with touring, Greenall has taken a turn as a superstar’s songwriter providing material for John Legend and Amy Winehouse. For a low-key personality such as his, who is grounded and budget in his ventures, this experience has served to better what he is doing for himself.

“My only agenda is I want to like what I wrote afterwards,” says Greenall. “When the stakes are high, other agendas are brought to the table. It’s not a negative thing, but you can’t just write what you want like I do for my own stuff. It’s great practice. The higher stakes, the more traditional you’ve got to be. The more reach you want with the song, the more tight it’s got to be on the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus vibe. I’ve learned a lot about songwriting in the past year. Instead of sitting back in my comfort zone, I’m pushing it harder. Push the point, or push the message, or push your voice, or something, push it.”

By now the chicken Greenall has been cooking has become matchstick dry—which was his intention since he’s planning on using it for a chicken salad.



“That’s a conscious decision,” says Greenall of his chicken situation and his artistic decision to remain independent. “We don’t want the 150 grand publishing advance. We’d rather do what we want to do. You either make all your money at the beginning, and spend it, and never pay it back, and then your career ends and you say thanks a lot. Or, you spread it out. It’s just a good ethos.”

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