Reviews
THROUGH STONES
Avec SIMON FINN, JOOLIE WOOD et DANNY SCEATS
L'auteur du splendide Pass the Distance (1970), dans lequel folk et psychédélisme se mêlaient de façon si authentique devenu depuis un album culte du courant acid-folk, a été redécouvert au tournant de ce millénaire par David Tibet de Current 93. Simon Finn a, au cours de la décennie écoulée, sorti une suite d'albums solo non moins inspirés. Through Stones est sans doute le plus intimiste d’entre eux, traversé d’une poétique instantanément attachante. « FINN nous remue jusqu’au fond des tripes, et fait affleurer à la surface de nos encéphales barricadés, des émotions profondément enfouies » (D. KELVIN / Xroads).
. . . his solo performance spewed the raw energy that you cannot feel from the
CD. I don't know how to explain that unique energy but I
think the atmosphere is different from psychedelic.
LEE ELLE - Ulysses Magazine January 2011
Reviews for the novel Oral Hygiene:
“...what a creation - worldly, wistful, funny, grotesque, trashy. How to categorize this work, this product of the totally sui generis Finn? Picaresque noir, comically insightful, pushing the Ancient Mariner envelope? We are treated to plumbing detectives, the severely dentally challenged, and a colorful, if troubling selection of damaged, though often moving, human relationships. Finn's sales pitch is, “If you don't like it after twelve pages, it won't grow on you”. It worked on me.Alex Shoumatoff, contributing editor, Vanity Fair Magazine
For longer reviews or to see thumnails in a larger form touch the underlined link. Many were unfortunately lost with the old server. They will with luck appear in time .. or not.
XRoads review Rats Laugh Mice Sing
For: XRoads review
Copenhagen top live show
XRoads review of Paris - 2009
Perhaps the last time I will get share a page with Brigitte Bardot & Jean Luc Goddard!
For: XRoads review of Paris show
Toronto top five live
The Hour - 2009
Simon Finn - (10 to1 Records)Rats Laugh Mice Sing
Steve Guimond
The mythical, mystical Simon Finn - the onetime Montreal resident whose life story deserves a big screen adaptation starring himself as him - is kind enough to offer up his fourth album in 40 years. Rats Laugh Mice Sing finds the singer, songwriter and guitarist thriving in his new U.K. environs, the songs cutting sharper and stinging deeper, Finn's wordsmith skills finding few rivals anywhere. I'm digging the new expanded musical direction: new sounds and blabs of trumpets, Wurlitzer, piano, drums, FX, violin, mandolin, clarinet, sax, recorder, melodic, banjo and xylophone. Folk meets the art world.
http://www.hour.ca/music/spin.aspx?iIDDisque=5630
Time Out NY - Top live
For: Time Out NY - Top Live
The Wire:
Simon Finn's recent return to live work and recording a mere three and a half decades after the release of his sole album, Pass The Distance, has been one of the most remarkable comebacks of recent times, with his creative powers seemingly undimmed by the intervening years.
Magic Moments is the first collection of all new material to emerge since then and it'll be gravy for anyone who has experienced his wildly hypnotic live shows.
It gathers a clutch of recent performance favourites (three of which "Walkie Talkie", "Eros" and "Wanted You", previously appeared on last year's Silent City Creep EP) alongside a reworking of one track, "Golden Golden", that dates back to the time of his first LP.
The sound is live, primitively executed and extremely intimate, with Finn on acoustic guitar and vocal, accompanied on a few tracks by Joolie Wood, of Sun Dial and Current 93, on flute, recorder and violin.
Finn's presiding influence still sounds like Leonard Cohen, and that same kind of cigarette box apocalypticism defines the atmosphere of much of Magic Moments.
His lyrics are bleak, scabrous and funny, and the combination of violin, acoustic guitar and revealing personal exegesis gives it the feel of Rolling Thunder/Desire-era Bob Dylan.
Poland Krakow Gazette 2009
Dziennik Polski
Time Out NY - Top live
For Time Out Top Live
Boomcat
At the heart of Finn's music is the interplay between his intricate Bert Jansch-like fingerpicking and the funereal bleakness of his impassioned voice.The album, although not necessarily lo-fi, is recorded with the utmost intimacy, only serving to place emphasis on how emotionally strenuous this album is.
Tracks like 'Crow Flies', 'Walkie Talkie' and 'Wounded Tiger' have moments of genuinely spine-tingling power, largely derived from Finn's remarkable and often challenging lyrics.
Finn makes an interesting parallel case to Vashti Bunyan, another '70's folk luminary who has recently restarted her career after a lengthy break. While Bunyan taps into a hippyish, rather sunny outlook, Finn represents a darker underbelly, and offers an unnerving yet no less beautiful alternative take on the genre. Highly recommended.
Uncut Magizine
"Originally Issued in 1970 on the Mushroom label, this uncategorisable minor classic defies expectation at every turn"... Nothing though prepares you for the standout track Jerusalem, which provides the missing evolutionary link between Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction and Nick Cave in best biblical mode" - UNCUT
For: full Uncut review
The Hour - 2007
Accidental LifeNovember 22nd, 2007
Montrealer Simon Finn's songs have always carried the weight of the world on their three-minute shoulders, heady vivid narratives cutting to the heart of personal, romantic and familial relationships. Accidental Life is only the third record in his topsy-turvy, 35-plus-year career, a solid gold gem that outshines its largely acoustic-guitar predecessors through beefy production and a further incorporation of outside instruments (percussion, strings, winds, electrics, piano, backing vocals). Finn's a world-class lyricist and picker who deserves a much greater spotlight, particularly in his adopted hometown.
http://www.hour.ca/music/spin.aspx?iIDDisque=4577
Pitchfork
A black-magical Devendra Banhart in a different time/place long before this freakfolk thing hit, the English bard Simon Finn released Pass The Distance , a sprawling, fractured, dense brew of dark acid-folk on Mushroom Records in 1970. Thanks to the hard work of Current 93's David Tibet and fellow admirers, the forgotten masterwork is back in print along with four (admittedly less interesting) additional rarities as well as liner notes by Tibet, Finn, David Toop, and Vic Keary of Mushroom.Finn's somnambulant folks is expanded up and then exploded with the dense Astral Weeks x10 production and multi-instrumental playing of Toop and Paul Burwell, who affix tabla, harmonium, flute, mandolin, accordion, violin, organ, electric bass, guitars, and various panning percussive bits to Finn's acoustic guitar and haunting, drunken-sailor, Roky Erickson-like soothsaying. The album's centerpiece is "Jerusalem", a six-minute, shiver-inducing crucifixion-of-Jesus exorcism that anticipates Current 93 as well as a bevy of lesser apocalyptic folkies. By its ecstatic, organ smashed final strains, you can't but help imagining Finn sweaty and in a trance, his guitar splintered and speaking different six-string languages. Perhaps on the verge of a deserved revival, in the past year he played a series of solo shows, some gigs with Current 93 and Six Organs of Admittance in Toronto and released an EP in connection with the events. Additional Canadian dates with C93, Six Organs, Antony, and Baby Dee are scheduled for the summer. --Brandon Stosuy