Personally I am not so sure that every successful songwriter and consummate session player is able to make the transition from accomplished hired-hand to accomplished man-of-the-match, and whilst Fin Greenall, aka Fink may have played alongside such soulful, melancholic thoroughbreds as Zero 7, Massive Attack, Camille and the Fratellis (to name just a few) there’s little here to suggest he can justify transferring his considerable talents as prodigious supporting cast member to leading man.
Bluesy, introspective and creeping around your earphones like Joseph Arthur in a pair of very soft bedroom slippers, Fink does ‘downtempo’ with sincerity and devotion but fails to clue in the tunes. The result is ostensibly a notch or two up on the likes of complete wasters like Jack Johnson, but three songs in and the languid acoustics and the soporific weightlessness of Fink’s silky, swooning vocal begins to collapse into a heap of well meaning jelly. Exceptions to this are the frisky and chattering arpeggios of the title track, ‘Sort of Revolution’, with its humming, almost cyclic Cajun rhythms and the boozy, dawg growl of ‘Pigtails’ featuring the ever delightful, Son of Dave. Fink is, if nothing else, the man most likely to breathe fresh life into the nostrils of jazzy savants like John Martyn. With more Grace perhaps, but less Danger.
Less time emoting, more time knocking up tunes and the job might be a good’un. ‘Sort’ of …