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As guitarist with Tsuji Giri (Manchester’s biggest and best kept secret ‘almost’ band of recent years, alongside The Sonar Yen), Saul self-released a Steve Albini-recorded album in 2005, with the band promptly self-destructing upon release. After all the tribulations associated with the process of production and shared decision-making, Danny rethought every aspect of how to perform and record with the minimum of intervention or interference; Harsh, Final is the culmination of a bloody minded pursuit for a personal satisfaction in both making music and Doing Things Right. ‘Your Death’ opens the album with softly plucked acoustic guitar, and proceeds to build layers of acoustic and electric guitars into a hazed atmosphere, which suddenly comes into focus as the track s defining chords state that this is a song, and that everything put in place so far is only framework. And in many ways this typifies what makes the record really tick: the fission between the pull of the songs and the musical dynamics working within and yet outside them. Be sure – Danny Saul is very much not a conventional singer-songwriter, with all the compromise and baggage that carries with it.