Perfect Darkness

Album review

On Perfect Darkness, Fink sticks to the excellent template he developed around 2006, and in its best moments, the record offers sounds on par with anything off his previous two records: the same taut folky guitar, the same delicate grooves, and the same quiet, reserved vocals all rolled into one laconic, low-key package. It's not really as dark as he says, but instead, it's perfect introspection music, sort of like Early Day Miners covering Recoil's bluesy electronica gem, or SubHuman, only using even fewer notes than usual, with two or three sparse textures at most, other than the vocals. Therein lies the problem, though, as deeper into the album, Fink tries to take brevity to new heights and limits the instrumentation to his guitar and nothing else. But while his guitar lines on tunes like "Honesty" are as moody and to the point as ever, they come dangerously close to plodding without something else to underscore them. He eventually gets to build up the tension, producing, in fact, with more noise than before; see, for example, the final part of "Warm Shadow" or the sporadic gospel choirs and electric guitars on other tunes. But it still feels like Fink tries to express solitude head-on -- if you sit and brood alone, there's got to be only one instrument on the song -- and it doesn't really work that way. Some of the lyrics also toe the line between profound and contrived: -- "Fear is like fire/You can warm your hands on it/Fear is like fire/You can burn your house down with it" is a good example. But still, even in its low moments, when Perfect Darkness recedes into the background, it doesn't lose the beautiful, pensive vibe that is the best thing about Fink, and tracks like the opener or "Foot in the Door" deliver the groovy melancholy like few others can.

© Alexey Eremenko /TiVo