Ninja Tune
2006
Biscuits For Breakfast
About This Album
One has to give the NinjaTune label credit for taking a chance on Biscuits for Breakfast. When we last listened in on Finian Greenhall (aka Fink), he was making ambient trip-hop beats (2000s Fresh Produce), and a long six years later he's become a full-blown, guitar picking singer/songwriter. No, we're not speaking of the whiskey-rotted, cowboy-hatted, delusional Americana of a Townes Van Zandt wannabe, nor the wasted Cocaine California decadence of the Jackson Browne-Eagles brood, nor the weepy, terminally depressed Nick Drake-wish-upon-a-Pink Moon-songstrelsy either. Instead, Fink's gone his own way. That's not to say the sounds of his heroes aren't in here: one can hear John Martyn in his noirish approach to jazzy acoustic blues, the bottleneck influence of Peter Green (post-Fleetwood Mac y'all) and even the fingerpicking toughness of Davy Graham. There is a wonderfully intimate smokiness in Fink's approach to his songs. It's intimate, but utterly lacking in sentimentalism,. Check the opener "Pretty Little Thing," on which he plays the whole menagerie: bass, guitar (nylon strings, no less), and B-3. The lyrics in this cut are not much to be sure, but as a first track Fink's looking to usher in the set's atmosphere, and as such it works beautifully.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,5 and 7)

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