Thursday, 5 December 2013

THE FIN. FADED LIGHT [VIDEO]

Wow I haven't heard a new song from these guys in ages. Well, actually, this song isn't that new really – in fact it's like a year old. It's just that very recently it's received a video treatment, which does serve to update a song. And it's come at a good time, well, perhaps me writing about it right now has come at a good time since the video's been out a while – The fin.'s debut EP Glowing Red On The Shore, which also includes the song of theirs I wrote about back in May, 'Misty Forest' , and which is out tomorrow (6th December).

The fin. is a Japanese band from I'm not sure whereabouts in Japan. But where they're from doesn't particularly matter: they're good, they sound good, and that's kind of all that matters really. Yep, it's better to be meritocratic about these things rather than operate on a geographical bias. In any case, let's talk about the video. It's a trip around London on a double-decker bus and also a trip into the English countryside, shot to create the illusion of seeming much older than it is – and it works really nicely, having a retro sound themselves, the retro look to the video is the perfect companion to their song, 'Faded Light'.

Moving between the driving stadium-rock-esque sweeps of supremely delayed and reverb guitar first blasted out in the song's intro, and the relatively sparse, indie-summoning verses – where the raw, simple drumbeat joins hands with the basic plucked lines of the bass – 'Faded Light' is an homage to the music of yesteryear. The vocals, coming from The fin.'s singer and songwriter frontman Yuto Uchino, are thin and soaked in a wonderful echo, adding subtle touches of nostalgic emotion to the song in rich layers.

Overall, it's an epic-sounding slice of indie that sounds like nothing else at the moment, nothing that I've heard anyway. It's this mix of old and new with influences from all over the place: vocals that conjure a kind of MGMT-slant on singing and guitar sounds that clang and thrum in ecstatic U2-like handraising numbers. But rather than clashing, its different elements blend into each other like only the sweetest of memories can do.



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Visit The fin.'s official site
Watch The fin. on YouTube

Follow Yuto Uchino on Twitter



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