Comeback Kids: Finch Are Settled And Firing On 'Back To Oblivion'

‘Back To Oblivion’ ended a long wait. Finch’s third album followed nine years after their second and emerged from the wake of their ‘What It is To Burn’ reunion tour, burying a few ghosts and marking the band out as a force to be reckoned with once again in the process.

We recently caught up with bassist Daniel Wonacott to discuss the reunion, the writing process and dealing with their past travails.

Momentum picked up pretty quickly after the initial ‘What It Is To Burn’ shows, because people were excited to hear those songs one more time, but when did Finch start feeling like a band again, rather than a rekindling of something from your past?

Pretty much right away. You know, to get ready for that anniversary tour we did a ton of rehearsal. It’s a big commitment even before you play the first show. We were playing together a lot, enjoying ourselves. It felt really good just to play music with your best friends again. We started writing and playing around with new material almost immediately after those first anniversary shows.

Was putting together new stuff a natural development or something that you discussed?

It was fairly natural, I think once we all realised that each of wanted it, we started writing consistently. We ended up working consistently, I think we all wanted it pretty bad.

Was there any anxiety or trepidation after what happened when the band came around to a full-length follow up to ‘Say Hello To Sunshine’?

No, once we had some new material going we were feeling pretty good and motivated. We didn’t worry too much about what the band had done in the past, musically or otherwise. We didn’t have anyone telling us what to do, we hadn’t signed a record deal yet, nobody knew we were writing. It was pretty low pressure in that sense. We had no idea what kind of record we wanted to make or would make.

Did the reaction to Back To Oblivion live play any role in deciding whether to put out a new record?

Not really. By the time we were playing that song live we had a good chunk of the writing done. For us it was mostly about making sure we had the material we wanted to create the whole record. We didn’t want to announce that we had another record on the way until it was pretty much done being written.

The band’s sound has always been evolutionary and one that’s gone off on tangents, but on this record you’re lean and mean. It’s very direct. Was that a conscious decision?

I think we definitely wanted to put together a set of songs that was well written and lean, that being said we didn’t have any sort game plan to write a specific kind of record. It was more about writing songs that felt great to play in the room. This record is just another step in the evolution.

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