Fin Greenall‘s last release – a collaboration with Holland’s revered Royal Concertbebouw Orchestra – seemed to offer a new perspective on the Cornishman’s work.
Working the added dimensions, an assortment of pieces highlighted the talents of an artist capable of seeing his normally introvert sensibilities thrive in the broadest of musical contexts.
Where critics previously might have accused him of being incapable of anything other than the subtlest of dramas, the transformation rivalled anything a duckling or caterpillar is capable of.
Greenall has a cosmopolitan background, having worked on Amy Winehouse‘s first demos, received three BMI awards for his work with John Legend‘s ‘Evolver‘ and worked stints for a number of prominent labels. The hallmarks of his career would seem to be change and always seeking new horizons; on ‘Hard Believer‘, however, this will-o-the-wisp script is not quite followed to the letter.
To explain, this is not a difficult record as such: it smoulders, almost vibrating as on the title track’s stripped back groove, little more than a plaintive blues lick and Greenall’s rolling, intensity filled drawl. This austerity is a familiar territory which he’s mapped out before, a tempo that allows the listener to pause and be submerged. On ‘Pilgrim‘, an urgency is added, a gradual building of momentum which reaches out across its epic seven minute duration, the endlessly repeated line, “From small beginnings/Come big endings”, wrenched out like a mantra until a sudden breakdown leaves it fading to nothingness. Not for the casual, and we’re not even at that point half way through ‘Hard Believer’s ten songs.
Blessed with a voice able to eke out almost anything along the axis between soul, folk and modern day r&b, Greenall instead prefers to sit himself on songs like ‘Shakespeare‘ and ‘Two Days Later‘ in a field of largely one. Both are, if such a thing exists, archetypes of a singer-songwriter’s trade, the latter possibly a sympathetic remix away from echoing the success of former co-worker Legend.
Part of the process is it also seems to be giving this sparseness an opportunity to sprawl, as few of the songs clock in at less than five minutes and most require greater listener commitment than that. At times the choice seems so obvious as to be made for you; on the swelling gospel overtones of ‘Too Late‘ it’s as compelling as breathing. On closer ‘Keep Falling‘ we’re back with just an acoustic guitar and that earthen voice. These are the tools of Greenall’s trade now, and like a craftsmen, dalliances with gangs of other musicians in the round are fun, but strictly that.
‘Hard Believer’s biggest success is the most obvious one, in which it avoids much of the horrible, coffee shop/busking clichés which seem to render so many of his contemporaries into bland automatons.
Fin Greenall’s obvious preference is to do the simple things well, a habit which inevitably means that the results are to be admired, even if at times you feel they leave some potentially fascinating avenues still unexplored.
