Review: Fink – The City Is Coming To Erase It All
Fink – The City Is Coming To Erase It All
Format: CD – VInyl LP – Digital
Label: R’COUP’D
Release: 2026
Text: Tom Wouters
Fin Greenall is the frontman of Fink, a band that already recorded nine albums. Greenall was born in Cornwall, the rural peninsula that forms the south-east part of the UK. He grew up in Bristol however, where he soon became a well-known DJ in the techno and rave circuit. He made a few albums for the legendary Kickin’ Records label and found himself ( “…as a hip beatmaker”, as he calls it himself) around 2006 asked to produce upcoming young singers, including the then totally unknown Amy Whitehouse. He ended up writing songs with her.
This songwriting experience opened the door for the band Fink (Tim Thornton – drums, Guy Whittaker – bass) as we know them now. The album Biscuits For Breakfast was slowly recorded with three microphones and no budget. From there it was a step-by-step development to a band playing world tours and festivals. In 2024 Fink released the album Beauty In Your Wake, recorded in a church in the village of Zennor in Greenall’s beloved Cornwall. The album was recorded and co-produced by Sam Okell in his Zennor Sounds studio.
Right after that Greenall started to think of a follow-up for that album. Starting point was the fact that he wanted to produce an album in the lineage of two authentic, quietly revolutionary artists, Michael Chapman and John Martyn. Especially, he wanted to make an album with the vibes or the ethos of Chapman’s Fully Qualified Survivor(1974), an album that sounds like a story. That became the album that is released now, The City Is Coming To Erase It All. A story that begins with the greeting in Wishing For Blue Sky, about the universal teenage ache: waiting for life to start.
The influence of Michael Chapman is clear at Does The Shade Choose Who To Comfort?. The song could easily come from Fully Qualified Survivor, a swampy, mulchy, organic song with a Celtic violin intro by American violinist Charlie Schnurr. Two Magpies is a gorgeous, fingerpicked ode for Greenall’s daughter and Memorise Your Senses is a hypnotic sitar mantra, as is the following Dark Edges. Two folk songs still to go before the conclusion of the story, the beautiful Keeping You Awake and the fragile sung I Buried All The Answers, that reminds us of the best works by John Martyn. The atmospheric, instrumental soundscape Spirit Of Place is the conclusion of the album.
The City Is Coming To Erase It All, Fink’s ninth album is an intriguing, almost mysterious album with the vibes of the early seventies music of the likes of Michael Chapman and John Martyn.
Tracks:
01. Wishing for Blue Sky
02. Does the Shade Choose Who to Comfort
03. Two Magpies
04. Memorise Your Senses
05. Dark Edges
06. Keeping You Awake
07. Buried All the Answers
08. Spirit of Place
Website: https://finkmusic.net/