For his first non-soundtrack, non-Finn Brothers-related release in seven years, Tim Finn’s new album Say It Is So has received surprisingly small-scale distribution through a small indie label – a far cry from 1993’s criminally underpromoted Before & After, which was released on Capitol to little fanfare or critical acclaim. The new album, Tim’s first since getting married in 1998 and having his first child, is about as different from Before & After as brother Neil Finn’s first solo album was from anything Crowded House had done.
The CD kicks off with a pleasantly Beatles/ELO-ish effort called “Underwater Mountain”, complete with string backing. Things quickly get a little stranger with “Shiver”, one of several songs which seem to be trying to drag Tim’s sound into a dub/trance/house-inspired style, with varying degrees of success. Arguably, the best of these experiments is “Big Wave Rider”, where effects and filters are piled high onto the voices about as thickly as possible. With repeated listening, I’ve actually gotten to like “Big Wave Rider” better than anything else on the album! It’s rather infectiously catchy.
When not trying to modernize his sound, Tim’s music ranges from pleasant to puzzling. Pleasant, in the form of the first single, “Twinkle”, which is easily the most commercial song on the CD, and possibly the best; and puzzling, as in “Good Together”, a nice song with perfectly good lyrics which receives an odd vocal treatment, somewhere between Rod Stewart’s early “Maggie May”-era style and a teenage boy colliding head-on with puberty. Tim reportedly used first takes for most of the album’s tracks, which is an interesting experiment, but the vocal styling on “Good Together” is just enough to make the whole song sound just a little bit off, though its rough heartfelt charm is more than enough to salvage it. The thrashing anguish of “Need To Be Right” is also a highlight. The deceptively relaxing “Death Of A Popular Song” has some rather amusing lyrics, some of Tim’s best in years. Several of the songs’ lyrics on Say It Is So were written by Tim’s new wife Marie, and I have to say that, as with all of Tim’s musical collaborations with family in the past, she does bring something to the table from a lyrical standpoint. Then again, I also liked most of the songs on Big Canoe, where the lyrics were written by someone other than Tim, a move he himself later regretted.
For the first time in many years – since his first solo effort, 1983’s Escapade – Tim’s Split Enz cohorts and his brother Neil do not make even the smallest appearance on the album. (This may have more to do with the fact that the sessions were in Nashville than any family politics.)
Say It Is So is, overall, another good collection from one of the founding fathers of Split Enz, even if a couple of tracks are rough around the edges.
- Underwater Mountain (3:56)
- Shiver (4:21)
- Good Together (3:15)
- Roadtrip (3:25)
- Need To Be Right (4:32)
- Twinkle (3:30)
- Big Wave Rider (3:20)
- Death of a Popular Song (4:23)
- Some Dumb Reason (3:03)
- Rest (4:39)
Released by: Sonny’s Pop
Release date: 2000
Total running time: 42:21