Finn. – The Best Low-Priced Heartbreakers You Can Own

His publicity pictures almost give me the creeps ”“ he looks like a wide-eyed, melancholy and slightly gormless medieval prince lurking in the shadows, and this album from Finn. is as theatrically arresting as its creator appears to be. Imagine Sigur Ros retreading Teaser And The Firecat; recorded on location at Gormenghast Castle. Solo acoustic guitar tunes (a lute might have substituted for some) swell and burgeon into anthemic orchestrated climaxes, no better exemplified by 'In The Wake Of': like a less cluttered 'Olsen Olsen', and no less polished. Expect to hear this grand cinematic music as the backdrop to many a TV segment soon.Finn. is, as you may have noticed, strictly speaking, Finn., as in "Finn dot" but that's far too confusing for everyone's spellchecker to stick with surely? In the flesh Finn. is Patrick Zimmer; a German but English speaking singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and fashion designer who had two previous albums of electronica and experimentation before deciding to shut himself away in the catacombs of a 14th century church in St. Pauli for 7 months and take a more traditional approach to song writing. Substitute cabin for catacombs and Wisconsin woods for a suburb of Hamburg and there's a similar Bon Iver 'out of the loop and back to basics' aesthetic going on - with artistically similar results: a unity of purpose and cohesive implementation as an artist gets other-worldly precisely by cutting himself off from communication with the real world. Also like Bon Iver's For Emma, the vocals might not be for everyone, but there's no denying the pull of its emotional weight.Paralysingly gob-smacking from the initial captured sigh from Zimmer, opener 'Half-Moon Stunned' is totally spellbinding. A delicate tune flowers into a breaking dawn of an orchestral finale, and all within three minutes. The next up proceeds along similar lines, but the near-falsetto voice he employs throughout for once strains on higher registers and teeters on being irksome - until familiarity comes with a few spins. It's the only time his delivery comes close to letting him down. Tracks ooze, by turn, resigned despair over failed relationships and solitude (summarised by that opening sigh) and epic uplifting grandeur as hope is rekindled in this intensely personal twilight world.Thunder rolls of kettledrums and shimmering cymbals, swirling lush strings and occasional drifting woodwind and barping trombone pad out the threadbare framework of each song. The simple handclap break on 'Julius Caesar' is a shock in this uniform landscape of classical drama and heralds a discordant closing segment that does hark back to the experimentation of his earlier career. Its seven minutes is balanced by four cuts of under a minute - usually instrumental continuations of the strident conclusion of the preceding track. Only 'The Truth Is A Lie' stands out from the stylistic orchestrated template; featuring for once a standard drum kit yielding a faltering tango beat, over which Zimmer wails darkly in a style recalling Devotchka.The packaging presents the album as a theatrical entity; prologue, five acts and an epilogue are summarised with earnest paragraphs. Similarly, the lyrics are compactly poetic if not always entirely comprehensible. "I won’t misuse my part / Because it upswings my heart" and “Everyone goes to the throne but not for long” are some of the lesser of many quirks, and to concentrate on them whilst looking at those publicity shots might lead at worst to thoughts of pretentiousness; at best to an over-zealous reliance on Babel Fish. But let them float by unquestioned - this concept album from the crypt is all about the brooding atmosphere and beautiful arrangements, and as such it's a mesmerising listen. 81%Finn on MySpace