The Sires: fiN (Jonny Garner – guitar, Simon Harding – drums, Luke Joyce – vocals, Kerry Lambert – bass)
The Stump: fiN played London’s Bush Hall Wednesday for the release of new single ‘Twenty Three/Eve’ on 16th April on Artisan Records. Debut single ‘The Artisan’, an almost entirely instrumental track which blends the epic darkness of Radiohead and the rock frenzy of Foo Fighters, brought fiN early adopters and began their quick succession of sell-out live shows. Second single ‘Rapture/Everybody Dies Alone’ followed earning the band glowing reviews and a packed out single launch at The Borderline.
The Scene: fiN navigted somewhere between the English Channel and the Pacific Ocean – possibly Route 66. Wednesday night in Shephard’s Bush LDR-esque oversaturated vintage Golden State reels bathed the porcelain walls of Bush Hall’s Victorian backing. Beneath chandeliers and a disco ball, heavy rich drums and lingering electric riffs drowned the tailored crowd in deliciously dense melodic metallic sound. fiN doesn’t have a bad side, or a bad angle. and they look like they sound – a meticulously motley crew of rocker types – grungy beach types, devil-may-care band with a James Dean-esque frontman donning Uncle Jesse hair #wontbehave
The Sound: There’s endless love coasting along relentless rock hearkening to a freshly aged sound as golden as the beaches liberating the backdrop. Then there’s the depths as the waves crash along the proverbial shore. Pieces of the gig draw me back to Atlanta backwoods drives… damp pine-filled aromas lingering along with the beautifully ominous sounds of The Deftones… Ivory vapors of sound as tangible as the aural White Pony was eargasmic. Ever the crowd-pleasers and cognizant audiophiles, fiN covered The Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime.” “This is not my beautiful house,” vocals faded as the tone turned nostalgic from the vantage of a frontman living out every boy’s dream of being a rockstar. Childhood videos replaced Sixties propaganda films, pinup Hollywood captures, and black-and-white media clips that would make even Bernays and McLuhan blush at their own brainchildren come to life. Ushering out the political with the personal past, the aural artisans displayed a return to individuality over industry, within some capacity. “You don’t know yourself, lucky you…” closing mullings from maestros projecting shadows of a nostalgia never known, perhaps a most fitting foothold for a British Indie band on the brink.
There’s a touch of Fool’s Gold in between the Let’s-Muse-About-When-Radiohead-Fought-Foo sounds, glossed with a definite sense of Pop-Rock Yellowcard/Sum-41 feel, with some strong Alien Ant Farm undertones – an easily familiarizing American sound for an English band.
They dig their fans. They have the look. They’re kind of like if Skrillex met Lana del Ray.
Watch This Space: When “Life is Wasted on the Living” played out to archived clips of everyone from Richard Pryor and Freddie Mercury, to Princess Diana and Winston Churchill… As Joyce stood in an image not unlike Peter Petrelli – beyond pixie blonde bombshells, social architects, and Dean the Causeless Rebel himself – the crowd too believed, for a second, that we can all be rockstars; we can all be heroes.
(The) Epochauserie 