The Finks release patient, wilful and poignantly imperfect album

Rolly Nice is the new album from The Finks and it is a cracker!
With a run of Victorian album launch shows this June, with shows in Collingwood (June 23) and Brunswick (June 24) still to come, The Finks are making their mark.
The Finks have been with Milk! Records since their first EP Things Work Out was released in 2012. Since then, they’ve released two more EPs (At the Royal Witherspoon and Settling) and two albums (Lucklaster and Middling).
Their new record Rolly Nice is a handful of objects, an album of contrasts. It includes sketches for solo piano, a guitar-led instrumental in ‘La Chose’ and a monologue set to music in ‘Charlie’s Manifesto’. Lyrically, ‘Thankful’ and ‘Peter Out’ have the brevity of poems, while ‘Body Language’ and ‘When What Changed Us Changed Us’ take on the complexity and intimacy of other lives lived.
Now, Rolly Nice is a patient, wilful and poignantly imperfect album. To celebrate their release, The Finks have come up with a ‘Mostly Piano’ playlist for us!
Misty by Errol Garner
I don’t remember but I’m told that one of my skills when I was three or four was to sit at the piano and show anyone who asked where every octave began with a C.
Angel Eyes by Joe Albany
I liked the idea of playing piano but I hated having to read music and sit exams and curl my fingers in the correct position. I wanted to play what I heard and to look at my hands while I was doing it.

Mother’s Love by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou
My second piano teacher was a private tutor who didn’t believe in exams. Mum would drop me off at his house for half an hour or an hour and we would play duets and he would teach me the merits of boogie-woogie. His german accent made the word sound theatrical. His was the first stranger’s house I can remember being in, aware of its foreignness, staring at the decor.
Kegelstatt Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano by WA Mozart (played by The Family Trio)
My older brother played the trumpet. Dad used to play the violin and maybe some other instruments and I remember my brother’s supervised practices with dad always in the room, clapping and humming. I had a drum kit set up in the next room but nobody seemed to mind. My brother was a talented musician but he thought basketball was more fun.
Libra by Mary Lou Williams
“We moved to Tulsa, and I went to live over an undertaker’s. Apart from natural deaths, there was a killing every other day, with weekends the best for business. I was not working, and to break the monotony I’d got permission to drive for the undertaker. In those days they had to go after work, racing to the scene as soon as a kiling was reported. Whoever got there first took the body.” – Mary Lou Williams

Lush Life by Billy Strayhorn
“All of this made Strayhorn drink, and drink, and drink. He attracted some attention an on English tour by ordering his gin-and-tonics in pint glasses; on the road, he would mix himself a stream of drinks from a miniature bar specially mounted in a suitcase.” – Martin Gayford
Chant by Nils Frahm
My friend says that one of her favourite things as a child was to open the front panel of her family’s piano and to realise that the jar of water they kept inside needed to be refilled.
Pieces Lyriques, Op. 54: IV. Notturno by Edvard Grieg (played by Mara Dobresco)
I wrote my first song on the piano. It was a breakup song, mostly chord bashing. I was young and heartbroken and taking lots of long walks in the rain but I remember finishing the song and playing it over and over on the piano and feeling a lot better.
Springtime in Chicago by Sun Sa
“There are some words that sound very bad, but they are very good for people. And there are some words that sound very good, but they are very bad.” – Sun Ra
Theme from Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saens (played by Nina Simone)
When I left the third piano teacher I knew they’d be the last. I can remember my parents being less disappointed than I was expecting. “As long as you don’t end up regretting it,” they said.