Finnish folk artist H.C. Slim releases his debut album, Sings, through Svart Records. It's claimed that locally he was a cult figure of sorts, having amassed quite a catalogue of original songs he’d demoed on a tape recorder, deep in the Eastern Finnish countryside. Over the year’s cassettes and CDRs began to circulate with original copies selling for high prices, before Svart Records drove out to his remote self-cabin to offer Slim a deal for his debut album...

I'm not sure I swallow the "thing of legend" puff being churned out by the PR company on this album, but how H.C. Slim was discovered is unimportant. While he can write strong folk music, he can't sing. He delivers his lyrics in a half talk / half attempt at singing. In many ways he's not a million miles away from Bob Dylan's delivery... but I suspect that's what he was going for.

To be fair, after you get used to his delivery you kind of just go with it and the vocals are not as distracting as at first appeared. It's more about the music and lyrics and this is where Slim delivers.

You'll either be a fan or totally not get it. I leaned more in the former camp... but that was after giving the album quite a few play throughs.

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Nick Smithson