Tag: Neil Finn

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2022 Artists (by group or surname) Music Reviews Non-Soundtrack Music R Todd Rundgren Year

Todd Rundgren – Space Force

4 min read

Order this CDA kind of follow-up to 2017’s White Knight album, Space Force is an entire album of collaborations between Todd Rundgren and, one suspects, whoever picked up the phone and said “yes”. This includes some serious talent – The Roots, Adrian Belew, Thomas Dolby, Steve Vai, Neil Finn, to name just a few – and Rundgren’s attention to production detail lives up to its legendary reputation with each track. Musically speaking, this is the best stuff we’ve gotten out of Rundgren in years. Each song is a world unto itself, as the album hits as many genres and styles as possible, from “STFU”‘s in-your-face blues-rock stomp to the highlight of the album, “Espionage”, a delightfully atmospheric rap-pop crossover featuring Narcy. On some songs, Rundgren gracefully shares the limelight – I mean, who doesn’t want to harmonize with Neil Finn? – and on others, he’s very much at the forefront. The music resulting from this wildly diverse series of collaborations is absolutely fantastic.

If there’s a weak point to Space Force, it’s in the lyrics department. Some of them are sublimely heartfelt, such as the lead track. But Rundgren’s got a tendency to embrace satirical material and that side of him is much more hit-or-miss. “Down With The Ship” and “STFU” are just goofy; “Godiva Girl” is well one its way to being a blue-eyed soul number for the ages until, on its way to the exit, lyrics like “you gave me love diabetes” and “I got your sweet caramel stuck up in my grill” start creeping in. Comparing the subject of the song to candy is one thing, but then he’s got to get goofy on the off-ramp to the fade-out. Dude, you had it! You’d nailed it! It was a great song! And then…that. (Then the next track is “Your Fandango”, which goes off the deep end.) The hell of it is, there are some amazing lyrics on here too – I’m looking at you, “Puzzle” and “Someday” – and every once in a while the satirical material manages to stick the landing, such as “I’m Leaving” and its skewering of men who expect women to wait on them hand-and-foot. And then there’s the stuff in the middle, like “I’m Not Your Dog”, that I can’t even decide if it works or not. Rundgren’s always had that side to him; it’s just frustrating to have an album that has a winning slate of songs, some of which have lyrics that don’t seem to do the rest of the song justice.

4 out of 4Not every song has to be a Serious Statement about something in particular, that’s not my beef. It’s just that… you get the Roots and Sparks and Thomas Dolby to come sit in on the sessions for your new record, at least have some meat ready for them to chew on, right? The good news is that, Rundgren being Rundgren, every song is at least performed well and produced gloriously, and you can sense Rundgren jumping gleefully from genre to genre with each song depending on who he’s lined up to guest on that track. Even with its nonsensical lyrics, “I’m Not Your Dog” is delivered with so much funky swagger that maybe the words don’t matter. It’s a fun listen from beginning to end, if just a little bit frustrating. I’m all for artists not taking themselves too seriously; my complaint here is really a matter of balance, and everyone else’s mileage may vary. I give this one four stars for some great music, but some of the lyrics here are…lamentable. An occasional “Lockjaw” or a “Bang The Drum All Day” here and there is a fun diversion, but half an album of that?

  1. Puzzle with Adrian Belew (04:48)
  2. Down With The Ship with Rivers Cuomo (02:56)
  3. Artist In Residence with Neil Finn (03:13)
  4. Godiva Girl with The Roots (04:21)
  5. Your Fandango with Sparks (04:24)
  6. Someday with Davey Lane (03:00)
  7. I’m Not Your Dog with Thomas Dolby (05:49)
  8. Espionage with Narcy (05:02)
  9. STFU with Rick Nielsen (03:17)
  10. Head in the Ocean with Alfie Templeman (03:30)
  11. I’m Leaving with The Lemon Twigs (02:57)
  12. Eco Warrior Goddess with Steve Vai (05:32)

Released by: Cleopatra Records
Release date: October 14, 2022
Total running time: 48:45

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1999 2016 Artists (by group or surname) C Crowded House Non-Soundtrack Music Year

Crowded House – Afterglow (Deluxe Edition)

5 min read

Released several years after the breakup of the original lineup of Crowded House, Afterglow was a collection of songs that had been relegated to B-sides, to soundtracks, and sometimes to the cutting room floor, never making it to an album but becoming a favorite in the band’s live show. There was material concurrent with all four of the band’s studio albums at the time, and it was something of a bittersweet revelation of how prolific the band was.

But if the original release was a fond reminder of that, the deluxe expanded 2-CD edition is a jaw-dropping revelation. It was known that, after the departure of Paul Hester from the drum seat, an attempt was made to soldier onward with Peter Jones, who had toured with the band after Hester’s abrupt mid-tour exit in 1994. Jones was heard on drums on the original Afterglow‘s incredibly atmospheric track “Help Is Coming”, so obvious some recording was done with him. But the biggest surprise of the second disc is a stretch of material revealing just how much was recorded with Jones – a series of songs that basically amount to an album side. So yes, the deluxe edition of Afterglow brings us half of a Crowded House album that could have been, and really should have been, because the studio demos are so polished – and just as atmospheric as “Help Is Coming” – that they’re sharper than some bands’ final studio masters, and they reveal a band that could very well have continued despite the unplanned personnel change.

After Neil Finn’s home demos of such songs as “Instinct” and “Everything Is Good For You”, the Finn/Seymour/Hart/Jones lineup returns with “Anthem”, a song Finn unearthed from the archives as a charity single a few years earlier, and while it lacks the polish of a finished track, it does show an arrangement that’s been worked out an honed, complete with vocal harmonies. The next track by this post-Together Alone lineup is even more surprising, featuring Mark Hart singing lead on a song that he wrote, “I Don’t Know You”. Again, the song is presented in a somewhat rough state, but one with a lot of promise. Hart eventually reclaimed “I Don’t Know You” for his solo album Nada Sonata, but there’s something stripped-down, bluesy, and incredibly catchy about the Crowded House rendition that may well make it superior to Hart’s final studio version. This should’ve been a single, though one wonders how a single without Finn’s voice (or writing credit) front and center might have been able to navigate the band’s complex internal politics.

Even more songs follow, including the trippy “A Taste Of Something Divine”, which could almost be in late ’90s U2’s wheelhouse rather than what anyone would’ve been expecting from Crowded House. If this is what the band could’ve accomplished with Jones on drums, it’s kind of a glimpse into an alternate universe where Together Alone was followed by even edgier, more out-there changes in style.

Following a nice, folksy rendition of “Spirit Of The Stairs” (a favorite in the Crowdies’ live set), this lineup drops one last surprise with a hard-hitting rendition of “Loose Tongue”, a song which eventually migrated to Finn’s first solo album, 1998’s Try Whistling This. Upon hearing that album in 1998, I remember asking myself “Why was it necessary to break up Crowded House to do this album?”, and this version of “Loose Tongue” really brings that question back. There was very little of Try Whistling This that couldn’t have been done by the full Crowded House lineup.

But the alternate timeline in which Crowded House with Peter Jones in tow ventures into more adventurous musical territory ends there; the rest of disc two is rounded out with the three “new” songs from the 1996 greatest hits album, “Instinct”, “Not The Girl You Think You Are”, and “Everything Is Good For You”, all of them “safer”, more traditional Crowded House songs with 4 out of 4Mitchell Froom at the mixing board and Paul Hester on drums.

The musical equivalent of deleted scenes is what Afterglow was always about, but the expanded edition offers a truly eye-opening glimpse into what could have been if Together Alone had been but the beginning of an experimental phase, and not the end of one. Very few expanded reissues of existing albums justify the double-dip like this one does.

Order this CDDisc One

  1. I Am In Love (4:37)
  2. Sacred Cow (3:36)
  3. You Can Touch (3:45)
  4. Help Is Coming (4:48)
  5. I Love You Dawn (2:33)
  6. Dr. Livingston (3:56)
  7. My Tellys’ Gone Bung (3:10)
  8. Private Universe (4:07)
  9. Lester (2:19)
  10. Anyone Can Tell (3:35)
  11. Recurring Dream (3:23)
  12. Left Hand (2:57)
  13. Time Immemorial (4:06)

Disc Two

  1. I Am In Love (Home Demo) (2:07)
  2. Instinct (Home Demo) (2:03)
  3. Spirit Of The Stairs (Home Demo) (3:39)
  4. I’m So Scared Of Losing I Can’t Compete (Home Demo) (2:11)
  5. Everything Is Good For You (Home Demo) (3:14)
  6. Not The Girl You Think You Are (Home Demo) (3:00)
  7. Anthem (3:31)
  8. I Don’t Know You (Studio Demo) (3:40)
  9. A Taste Of Something Divine (Studio Demo) (4:14)
  10. Spirit Of The Stairs (Studio Demo) (4:55)
  11. Loose Tongue
  12. Rough Mix (3:51)
  13. Instinct (3:06)
  14. Everything Is Good For You (3:52)
  15. Not The Girl You Think You Are (4:08)
  16.  

Released by: Capitol Records
Release date: November 18, 2016
Disc one running time: 46:51
Disc two running time: 47:31

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Categories
1991 2016 Artists (by group or surname) C Crowded House Non-Soundtrack Music

Crowded House – Woodface (Deluxe Edition)

7 min read

Since the album’s original release in 1991, the long and twisted road that led to Woodface – Crowded House’s third studio album and arguably the point at which all future Finn Brothers joint efforts took root – has become much more illuminated. From a lengthy stretch of “nice, but we don’t hear a single” conversations with studio heads, to the temporary firing of founding bassist Nick Seymour, to the equally temporary hiring of Neil Finn’s older brother Tim, there’s enough story behind this album alone to power a couple of episodes of VH-1’s Behind The Music, if indeed that show was still being made.

As revealed in Chris Bourke’s warts-and-all band biography Something So Strong (1997), frustrations during the songwriting and recording process led Neil Finn to feel that Seymour wasn’t sparking joy creatively, so the bassist was shown to the door and replacements were auditioned, all of which finally convinced Finn that his angst had been mislaid at Seymour’s feet, opening the door for the band to snap back to its original lineup. The songs recorded without Seymour were put on the shelf; they’d wind up in the live setlist, sure, but the recordings went unheard by the vast majority of us. A few of them surfaced on the post-breakup compilation Afterglow, but the others were a mystery until now, unless you’d happened to hear them in concert. Between the tracks that made it to Afterglow and the bonus disc here, it’s now possible to piece together the original, Tim-less version of Woodface if you’re so inclined.

Spoiler: Tim-free Woodface really wouldn’t have been a bad album. Many of Neil Finn’s rejects are superior to some acts’ number one singles. “My Legs Are Gone” and “The Fields Are Full Of Your Kind” may not be classics on the same level as “Don’t Dream It’s Over”, but they’re worthy additions to the Crowdies’ catalogue, and they’re both incredibly catchy. Another memorable tune that was waiting in the wings is the surprisingly well-developed demo “I May Be Late”, whose harmonies might make you think that it’s a leftover from the Finn brothers’ songwriting sessions, but it was a song written solely by Neil, who apparently deemed it unworthy. Tim-free Woodface would’ve been a very guitar-oriented album that might have needed to lean a bit less on the very “produced” sound that emerged.

Also in the “surprisingly well-developed demo” category are early versions of “She Goes On” and “As Sure As I Am”, both of which seem like they’re a mere stone’s throw from the final studio versions, the latter exhibiting some significant lyric changes. The same can be said for “You Got Me Going”, an early version of “Sacred Cow”, one of the Woodface rejects that wound up on Afterglow. “Be My Guest” and “Burnt Out Tree” are home demos from that period when Neil was trying to write the entire album himself, and while they seem like they each have the germ of something interesting, they evidently ran out of time. A real surprise among the pre-Tim material is “Creek Song / Left Hand”, a fully polished studio version of a known song with a very different lyrical/verse structure, with the “Left Hand” portion being the only recognizable part. “Left Hand” is also part of the Afterglow tracklist, though I think I like the tune of this version better, but not necessarily the lyrics. But perhaps the most unfathomable, glad-they-left-that-on-the-cutting-room-floor specimen is an early rehearsal recording of “Fall At Your Feet”, which combined the verses of “You Got Me Going”/”Sacred Cow” with the chorus of “Fall At Your Feet”. This is what demos are for: to find out what is and isn’t working. (This combination wasn’t working.)

Paul Hester’s home demo of “Italian Plastic” is a particularly fascinating listen, as that’s one of the songs that ended up being “very produced” in its final form on Woodface, and since Hester’s no longer with us to offer any hints on what his original intentions were, this demo is the only clue we have.

Much of the rest of the bonus material was recorded circa 1989 by Neil and Tim Finn, with Hester on drums, as home demos for the Finn Brothers album that was eventually subsumed into Woodface. These are equally fascinating, with “Weather With You”, “There Goes God”, “Four Seasons In One Day”, “All I Ask”, and “How Will You Go” shining as the best examples of these. Also interesting are songs such as “It’s Only Natural” and “Chocolate Cake”, which are far less polished musically and lyrically than the aforementioned tunes, and yet the core of each song didn’t change that much between Neil’s home studio and the final studio recording, which may be why those two songs wound up with the level of production that they did: to disguise those very deficiencies. “Catherine Wheel” is here in demo form, though it would have to wait until Together Alone to make its appearance, and I think the demo makes a strong case for the argument that this song was much better with Youth’s production than it would’ve been with Mitchell Froom’s, especially as Woodface was, in a few places, lumbered with the most gimmicky production of any of the original lineup’s albums. The bonus disc is rounded out with a seven-minute live medley and the full version of “I’m Still Here”, a not-safe-for-work jam from which only an excerpt was heard in the fade-out of the original Woodface.

It’s tempting, and also dangerous, to try to read anything into the bonus disc material (indeed, I’m sure one of Neil’s favorite 4 out of 4hobbies is listening to people try to psychoanalyze him on the basis of Bourke’s tell-all book). But I think that a lot of the creative sturm und drang early in Woodface‘s development was down to frustration over what seemed to be the commercial failure of its immediate predecessor, Temple Of Low Men, and a lot of label pressure to just obediently crank out “Don’t Dream It’s Over II: Froom Hammond Organ Solo Boogaloo”. Listening to the original Woodface tracklist, as revealed on both this expanded reissue and Afterglow, I hear an album that would’ve been fine. Perhaps not on a level with Temple Of Low Men or the debut album, but not a stinker. And listening back to some of the more gimmicky production poured into the final mix of Woodface from a distance of 28 years, what I really find myself thinking is: maybe what the world – and Crowded House – really needed was Woodface a la Youth. I find myself taking issue not with the songs, but with the production.

Order this CD

    Disc 1 – original album:
  1. Chocolate Cake (4:02)
  2. It’s Only Natural (3:32)
  3. Fall at Your Feet (3:18)
  4. Tall Trees (2:19)
  5. Weather with You (3:44)
  6. Whispers and Moans (3:39)
  7. Four Seasons in One Day (2:50)
  8. There Goes God (3:50)
  9. Fame Is (2:23)
  10. All I Ask (3:55)
  11. As Sure as I Am (2:53)
  12. Italian Plastic (3:39)
  13. She Goes On (3:15)
  14. How Will You Go (4:14)
    Disc 2 – bonus tracks:
  1. Burnt Out Tree (Home Demo) (1:36)
  2. I May Be Late (Home Demo) (3:06)
  3. She Goes On (Home Demo) (3:13)
  4. As Sure As I Am (Home Demo) (2:37)
  5. My Legs Are Gone (Studio Demo) (4:33)
  6. You Got Me Going (Home Demo) (3:23)
  7. Italian Plastic (Home Demo) (2:54)
  8. Be My Guest (Home Demo) (2:03)
  9. Weather With You (Home Demo) (3:08)
  10. Chocolate Cake (Home Demo) (3:50)
  11. How Will You Go (Home Demo) (2:46)
  12. It’s Only Natural (Home Demo) (3:21)
  13. Four Seasons In One Day (Home Demo) (2:42)
  14. There Goes God (Home Demo) (2:43)
  15. Catherine Wheel (Home Demo) (3:00)
  16. All I Ask (Home Demo) (2:43)
  17. Fields Are Full Of Your Kind (3:29)
  18. Creek Song / Left Hand (3:04)
  19. Fall At Your Feet (Rehearsal Early Version) (3:22)
  20. The Burglar’s Song (Medley) – Around The UK In 7 Minutes (Live) (7:21)
  21. I’m Still Here (Full Version) (2:19)

Released by: Capitol Records
Release date: 2016
Disc one total running time: 48:06
Disc two total running time: 1:07:03

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2010 Artists (by group or surname) C Crowded House Non-Soundtrack Music

Crowded House – Intriguer

Crowded House - IntriguerThe announcement that Crowded House was getting back together was nothing short of a major surprise, and the first album following that announcement was a strange mix that started life as Neil Finn’s third solo album and really only included a handful of songs actually played by the reconstituted lineup of the band. Single selection was an even more awkward and political thing: strong songs were passed over in favor of those few that included the full lineup. The new album, Intriguer, has no such issues: the pre-publicity points out that the entire album emerged from band jams, and every track features the new lineup of Finn, Nick Seymour, Mark Hart and Matt Sherrod. Oddly enough, though, the result winds up sounding more like a Finn solo album than a Crowded House album, though at this point it’s probably a given that Finn solo is interchangeable with Crowded House at any given point, sort of like Jeff Lynne = ELO these days.

That’s not to say that it’s a bad album, not by a long stretch. And that’s also not to say that the Crowdies’ sound has ever been frozen in amber: the densely atmospheric Together Alone was a culture shock after the first three Mitchell Froom-produced albums. Intriguer is produced by Finn with Wilco producer Jim Scott, and the result winds up being neither as timeless as the Froom years, nor quite as adventurous as Together Alone. As with 2007’s Time On Earth and its lead single, this album is led by a rather unadventurous single, “Saturday Sun” – not a bad song, but not really attention-grabbing musically or stylistically.

Things get much more interesting with the third track, “Amsterdam”, which laments the city’s infamous reputation as a place where morality gets put on hold, in the form of a pleasant if downbeat ballad. The following track, “Either Side Of The World”, is very off-the-beaten-path for Crowded House, resembling – more than anything – “Paradise (Wherever You Are)” from the first Finn Brothers album. It’s got a jaunty tropical beat in which Sherrod really comes into his own at the drums – it’s a song that I can’t imagine Paul Hester playing, at least not this way. It’s odd that my favorite Crowded House songs these days sound nothing like what most people envision (i.e. Froom’s Hammond organ breaks) when they think of Crowded House. “Either Side” is an anthem to monogamy which goes more than skin-deep on the subject – not exactly a frequent topic of modern song lyrics.

“Isolation” seems to have been inspired by the pacing and arrangements of classic 1950s rock ballads, and is the second song to feature vocal contributions from Finn’s wife Sharon. Straight-ahead rocker “Twice If You’re Lucky” is probably the closest Intriguer comes to the early Crowded House sound, and it burrows its way into your subconscious quickly, along with the bittersweet “Even If”. But the experimentation is by no means a bad thing: the glue that holds every song together is Neil Finn’s rock-solid songwriting. (As legend would have it, when asked during an interview 4 out of 4what it’s like to be the greatest songwriter alive, Paul McCartney declined to answer on the grounds that Finn should hold that title. While I haven’t been able to source this oft-quoted interview, I’ll just settle for saying: ’nuff said.) No matter how “exotic” the style becomes, the songs at least have that going for them. “Even If” and “Elephants” deliver a double dose of wistful poignancy to slowly wind things to a close – which just means it’s time to start from the beginning again. Intriguer may take a little time to grow on you, but rest assured, it will.

Order this CD

  1. Saturday Sun (3:26)
  2. Archer’s Arrows (4:04)
  3. Amsterdam (3:34)
  4. Either Side Of The World (4:35)
  5. Falling Dove (4:35)
  6. Isolation (4:37)
  7. Twice If You’re Lucky (3:33)
  8. Inside Out (3:19)
  9. Even If (4:02)
  10. Elephants (4:30)

Released by: Fantasy
Release date: 2010
Total running time: 40:15

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2009 Artists (by group or surname) F Neil Finn Non-Soundtrack Music Tim Finn

7 Worlds Collide – The Sun Came Out

7 Worlds Collide - The Sun Came OutThe first 7 Worlds Collide album (and DVD) chronicled an all-star gathering of international musicians who assembled quickly to play a few dates in Neil Finn’s stomping grounds; the album was culled from the live performances, and the superstar band (which included the likes of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder) disbanded, after its shows raised money for charity. The second release under the 7 Worlds Collide banner retains the all-star band part of the formula, but the resulting double album is a creature of the studio, often under the watchful production eye of Neil Finn and/or the talent to which any given track is credited. There a few old faces and a few new ones as well: many of the guest musicians are drawn from a somewhat more local talent pool, with a number of names who may be well known in New Zealand but perhaps not so much outside of the south Pacific.

Virtually the entire Finn family is present, naturally; Neil Finn duets with his wife Sharon on “Little By Little”, a song about the rapid approach of an empty nest at home, and he also duets with Liam Finn, his son who’s carving out a respectable career as a solo artist, on “Learn To Crawl”. Liam also gets a solo turn in the twisty waltz “Red Wine Bottle”, while his younger brother Elroy (who has already been playing live with Crowded House) gets the studio to himself for “The Cobbler”, and while he hasn’t quite carved out the unique sound that Liam has, Elroy still bears watching – as with his older brother, his voice gives away his lineage. Tim Finn also turns in a pleasant solo song, “Riding The Wave.” Fans of the Finn family tree certainly won’t be disappointed by this collection.

Neil’s signature production style permeates nearly every other track on the album, too. It could be argued that The Sun Came Out is perhaps a little less varied in style than the previous 7 Worlds Collide project; with the whole thing in the studio under Finn’s aegis, it’s easy to tell who was at the wheel. This doesn’t detract from the fact that there are some fantastic songs here: Don McGlashan’s “Make Your Own Mind Up” and the KT Tunstall/Bic Runga duet “Black Silk Ribbon” are two of the best songs I’ve heard out of anyone, anywhere, all year long. Liam Finn’s “Red Wine Bottle” is a low-key number that sticks in your head, while the cheery lead track, Johnny Marr and Neil Finn’s “Too Blue”, is enough to brighten anyone’s mood. I also have to single out Jeff Tweedy’s “You Never Know” for special praise: the tune, the performance and the production almost achingly remind me of early ’70s George Harrison, and this is not a bad thing. At all.

If I have a single complaint with The Sun Came Out, it’s that the first disc is a pure pop adrenaline rush, while the second seems to slow down. It really doesn’t, but somehow the second CD lacks the “oomph” packed by the first disc (which literally doesn’t let up for its entire running time). And disc two is no slouch by any means – we get a new Neil Finn solo number (“All Comedians Suffer”), Tim’s and Elroy’s songs, KT Tunstall’s “Hazel Black”, and another Don McGlashan number, “Long Time Gone”. There’s no letdown in quality but somehow there’s a slight darkening of mood.

4 out of 4But that’s a very minor quibble indeed; with the possible exception of Battlestar Galactica Season 4 (and let’s face it, in most cases these two projects are aimed at wildly different audiences), there’s not another two-disc set that’s going to give you this much enjoyment for the price – and once again, Finn & company are sharing the proceeds with charity, so there’s more feel-good to some of these feel-good songs than you might expect. Very, very highly recommended. (Now get back in the studio with Crowded House, Neil!)

Order this CDDisc One

  1. Too Blue – Johnny Marr with Neil Finn (4:01)
  2. You Never Know – Jeff Tweedy (4:18)
  3. Little By Little – Sharon Finn and Neil Finn (3:18)
  4. Learn To Crawl – Neil Finn & Liam Finn (4:59)
  5. Black Silk Ribbon – KT Tunstall & Bic Runga (3:48)
  6. Girl Make Your Own Mind Up – Don McGlashan (5:29)
  7. Run In The Dust – Johnny Marr (4:23)
  8. Red Wine Bottle – Liam Finn (4:26)
  9. The Ties That Bind Us – Phil Selway (3:22)
  10. Reptile – Lisa Germano (3:53)
  11. Bodhisattva Blues – Ed O’ Brien & Neil Finn (3:55)
  12. What Could Have Been – Jeff Tweedy (3:41)

Disc Two

  1. All Comedians Suffer – Neil Finn (4:28)
  2. Duxton Blues – Glenn Richards (3:35)
  3. Hazel Black – KT Tunstall (3:46)
  4. Riding The Wave – Tim Finn (3:32)
  5. The Witching Hour – Phil Selway (3:03)
  6. Over & Done – John Stirratt (3:41)
  7. A Change Of Heart – Bic Runga (3:14)
  8. Don’t Forget Me – Pat Sansone (3:38)
  9. Long Time Gone – Don McGlashan (4:02)
  10. The Cobbler – Elroy Finn (4:33)
  11. 3 Worlds Collide (3:06)
  12. The Water – Sebastian Steinberg (4:02)

Released by: Sony
Release date: 2009
Disc one total running time: 49:33
Disc two total running time: 44:40

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2007 Non-Soundtrack Music S Split Enz

Split Enz – The Rootin’ Tootin’ Luton Tapes

Split Enz - The Rootin' Tootin' Luton TapesFor much of of 1978, Split Enz seemed to have reached the end of the road. Having lost their label contract, their management, and almost all of their live work, the band was stranded in England with only a grant from the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council in their native New Zealand to sustain them through the lean times. At this point, lead singer/songwriter Tim Finn’s younger brother, Neil, had been with the band for less than a year. With no concerts to play, the emphasis was on writing and rehearsing (and, when they could afford it, recording) new material, and with Phil Judd having come and gone again, Neil had his first chance to try to add his own songwriting touch to the band’s sound. In June and July of 1978, the Enz converged on a studio in Luton to record their new material, with songs written by both of the Finns. And the irony of it is that only a few of those recordings have been heard until now.

Approximately half of the songs recorded at Luton were honed further and re-recorded from scratch as the group’s 1979 album Frenzy. The other half were occasionally dusted off (and sometimes re-recorded) as B-sides for singles (this being back in the days when there were still physical singles, and when those singles still had B-sides), while others never saw the light of day. Poised precariously between the original Split Enz remit of arty, complicated rock with ambitious arrangements and challenging tempo changes, and the group’s more sharply-focused ’80s pop-going-on-new-wave sound, these are the Luton sessions, revealed at last after 30 years to satisfy relentless pressure from the group’s loyal fans down through the years.

Is there a reason these recordings weren’t issued at some point back then? Well…yeah. They’re definitely diamonds in the rough, and there’s almost zero stylistic unity in the material. With nothing to lose (how much lower could they go from being unemployed in another country, with no recording contract and no promotion?), the band can clearly be heard revisiting its old sound, taking various approaches to revamping it, and even trying on and discarding whole new styles as they saw fit. The bulk of the songs are still Tim’s, though the tunes written by Neil are a revelation. Some of the songs represent his earliest songwriting efforts, as well as some of his earliest outings as a professional musician. His singing voice is, to be charitable, unrefined in places, but the pure catchiness of his songwriting offsets that. “Carried Away” and “Holy Smoke” originated here, as did “Late In Rome”, better known as “Serge”.

Tim’s contributions aren’t anything to sneeze at, however – “Semi-Detached” (one of my favorite songs that the man’s ever written), “Hypnotized”, “Next Exit” and “Remember When” originate from the Luton sessions, among many others. It’s with Tim’s songs that one can hear the most stylistic experimentation; “Hypnotized” is performed almost in the style of ’50s blues-rock, with a typically Enz twist, and some of Tim’s other tunes are similarly poised between the Enz’ early ’70s music-hall-inspired sound and more instantly accessible styles.

There are other landmarks to be heard here, especially if one has the two-disc version that was made available only to the Frenz Of The Enz fan club. That second disc, not available at retail, consists primarily of early mixes of the songs from Frenzy. Some of them, such as “Frenzy” itself, is in a decidedly unfinished form. But that disc also contains other tunes as well – Phil Judd’s last two contributions to the Enz as songwriter, “I’m So Up” and “So This Is Love”, are on the fan-club-only disc, as is “Livin’ It Up”, a song by relatively new recruit Nigel Griggs, which sees the Enz belly up to the edge of punk…and apparently back away slowly again. Judd’s two songs are a sharp reminder that, as much as some listeners regard him as the architect of the Enz’s weirder excesses, he was as capable of coming up with catchy, three-or-four-minute gems just as the Finn brothers were.

Other unusual writing credits appear; the first disc features a Griggs/Tim Finn collaboration, “Creature Comforts”, “Straight Talk” (co-written by the elder Finn and former Enz sax/horn player Robert Gillies, who had departed the band by this point and embarked on an art career that would later see him serving as, of all things, production designer for Xena: Warrior Princess), and an atmospheric-but-rather-strange song called “Animal Lover” by Eddie Rayner. These songs likely emerged from group jams – it was about as close as the Enz would ever get to an all-hands-pitch-in kind of band. The rest of the time, barring a few Eddie Rayner instrumentals, it seems that the band’s music came from the minds of Judd and/or one Finn or the other. It’s an interesting peek into avenues left unexplored. The first-ever songwriting collaboration between the Finn brothers, “Best Friend”, can also be heard, though it’s not something you’d probably be expecting if your indoctrination into the Finns’ duets was Woodface or the Finn Brothers albums.

It’s worth noting that purists might object to one thing: Rayner remixed many of the recordings, though not all. The two Judd songs originate from an appearance on the BBC’s Dave Lee Travis show, and some were left alone or had been mixed down and couldn’t be remixed. “Semi-Detached” is one such example of a song left untouched, and it certainly didn’t need any revising. But to be honest, purist or no, I’ve never heard the Luton tapes in their original state – and I doubt too many can say that they have either – so it’s not as if I have something to compare this release to so I can hear what’s changed. I also appreciate that the bulk of the Frenzy material is on the second disc only; as Frenzy is still available commercially, these alternate takes amount to music deleted scenes and outtakes (though the band is said to prefer the raw passion of the original recordings). Those who only want to hear stuff they’ve never heard before can do just fine with the single-disc version.

4 out of 4Ultimately, this collection, in either single or double disc form, may really be for-fans’-ears-only material. These aren’t new Split Enz songs (nor are there likely to be any), but the vast majority of the songs on the first disc, and a fair few on the second disc, will be new to most fans’ ears, and I’m not one to pass up on the chance to hear something new – or even just new-to-me – from either Finn. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the group’s “year from hell,” in an English summer three decades ago.

Order this CD

    Disc one
  1. Miss Haps (4:08)
  2. Home Comforts (4:13)
  3. Animal Lover (3:16)
  4. Carried Away (4:37)
  5. Semi-Detached (5:03)
  6. Holy Smoke (3:21)
  7. Message Boy (3:47)
  8. Hypnotised (3:41)
  9. Late In Rome (3:25)
  10. Straight Talk (3:23)
  11. Hollow Victory (3:23)
  12. Evelyn (3:16)
  13. Best Friend (3:04)
  14. Creature Comforts (2:52)
  15. Remember When (3:56)

Disc two – Frenz of the Enz version only

  1. Hermit McDermitt (5:02)
  2. Betty (6:13)
  3. I See Red (3:15)
  4. Mind Over Matter (3:09)
  5. Next Exit (3:54)
  6. She Got Body She Got Soul (2:57)
  7. So This Is Love (4:14)
  8. Abu Dhabi (4:53)
  9. Famous People (4:02)
  10. I’m So Up (2:58)
  11. Marooned (2:27)
  12. Livin’ It Up (1:17)
  13. Frenzy (3:07)

Released by: Rhino
Release date: 2007
Disc one total running time: 55:25
Disc two total running time: 47:28

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Categories
2007 C Crowded House Non-Soundtrack Music

Crowded House – Time On Earth

I’m going to admit up front that it’s very hard not to overanalyze a new Crowded House album. In the decade between the final concert appearance of the band’s original lineup at the Sydney Opera House and this album, there’s been at least one book devoted to peering into the members’ psyche, and then Paul Hester died. It’s really difficult not to try to read something in between the lines lyrically, and in terms of Neil Finn’s motivations for trying to rekindle the Crowded House fire.

With new drummer Matt Sherrod aboard for the ride, and one song co-written with the Dixie Chicks, it’s safe to say that Time On Earth is not a revisitation of the “Don’t Dream It’s Over” stylebook. And that’s not a bad thing; the original Crowded House’s final studio album, Together Alone, was endearing precisely because it was such a daring departure from the sound that had evolved over the first three albums produced by Mitchell Froom. As is generally known now, Time On Earth began its life as Finn’s third solo album, and he reunited with Crowded House bassist Nick Seymour to record some tracks in the wake of Hester’s death. Midway through the recording, the project went from “Finn solo plus Seymour” to the return of Crowded House.

“Nobody Wants To” and the first single, “Don’t Stop Now”, however, stay on safe territory – they’re not a million miles away from the less daring tracks on Together Alone, and certainly not as “out there” as some of the cuts from Finn’s first post-Crowded House solo album. “She Called Up” is stylistically structured a little bit like Together Alone‘s “In My Command” (or the Finn B-side “She Comes Scattered”), and is the one song that reminds the most of Finn’s Split Enz-era songwriting. Which isn’t a bad thing.

Finn’s Beatlesque sensibilities come to the fore in “Pour Le Monde”, which sounds to me almost like Double Fantasy-era Lennon. It’s a lovely, wistful anthem of a song with a sumptuous orchestral backing – not something I’d really expect from Crowded House, but nice nonetheless. “Heaven That I’m Making” also smacks a little bit of Lennon, but reminds me even more of Finn solo tunes like “Secret God”.

It’s hard not to hold up “A Sigh” and “Transit Lounge” as an indication of where Crowded House could be headed if this new lineup records another album. They’re not exactly groundbreaking in and of themselves, but more than anything else on Time On Earth, these two tracks especially break out of the “safe” mold from which the rest of the album seems to be cut. The former is filled with atmospheric guitar effects, while the latter has some very strange effects for the first minute or so before settling into its real melody, which features female vocalists and sounds almost ELO-esque in places. “Silent House” is another standout, co-written by Finn with the Dixie Chicks, taking a bold step closer to Together Alone‘s unapologetic distorted-guitar jams. I think I say this at least once for every album in which Neil Finn is involved, but why this wasn’t the lead single, I’ll never know.

The question of “which songs are about Paul?” was ringing through my head while listening to Time On Earth (and before reading any liner notes), and while “You Are The One To Make Me Cry” (an interesting counterpoint to Woodface‘s “All I Ask”), the surprisingly upbeat “English Trees” and the oustanding “People Are Like Suns” seem to address that tragic event most directly, in listening to the entire album, I think it’s probably safest to say that Hester’s suicide and the resulting emotional turmoil left in his wake informs the entire project from beginning to end. Listened to in one sitting, there’s a melancholy that infuses even the seemingly upbeat songs. And that’s not a bad thing – those of us who have followed Crowded House since before “Don’t Dream It’s Over” nearly topped the U.S. charts in 1987 are also missing Paul Hester, and it’s an interesting sort of shared catharsis between audience and artist that is needed on both sides of the equation. I’d love to make it to one of the live shows to see how much of this catharsis bubbles to the surface with the new material on stage.

4 out of 4Time On Earth may not sound like a bundle of laughs, with a decidedly not-light-hearted heaviness weaving through much of its material, but it’s some beautiful music, and hopefully a sign that the house can stay crowded for more albums yet to come. Nick Seymour and, on those songs where he appears, Mark Hart (who folks still seem to forget was a full-time regular member of the band when last we left it) weave their magic and prove that there is, indeed, a difference between a new Crowded House album and a new Neil Finn album. I’d love to see them plow a path off the beaten road as they did with Together Alone, and not necessarily even in the same direction. Welcome back, guys.

Order this CD

  1. Nobody Wants To (4:10)
  2. Don’t Stop Now (3:54)
  3. She Called Up (2:53)
  4. Say That Again (5:21)
  5. Pour Le Monde (5:10)
  6. Even A Child (3:57)
  7. Heaven That I’m Making (3:56)
  8. A Sigh (3:17)
  9. Silent House (5:52)
  10. English Trees (3:43)
  11. Walked Her Way Down (4:17)
  12. Transit Lounge (4:25)
  13. You Are The One To Make Me Cry (3:43)
  14. People Are Like Suns (3:52)

Released by: ATO
Release date: 2007
Total running time: 58:30

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Categories
C Crowded House Neil Finn Non-Soundtrack Music

Crowded House – Farewell To The World

Farewell To The WorldOn November 24th, 1996, the original lineup of Crowded House (plus longtime touring musician and recent full-time recruit Mark Hart) took its final bow on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, with a crowd of somewhere around 200,000 people making it the biggest concert anywhere in the world that year – ironic when one considers that the whole thing started out with Neil Finn’s suggestion for a humble, small-scale farewell performance for the group’s final public outing…at least in that form.

Farewell To The World has wowed me for a long time, going all the way back to its VHS video release, and I’ve always wondered where in the world the obligatory CD was. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the group’s final performance (as well as to get the Crowded House name back in the public eye just in time for a reunion album and tour), Farewell is finally available on CD and DVD, and it even sidesteps my natural inclination to grumble about re-releases that this edition includes some material that didn’t appear on my now well-worn videotape of the event. Still, this should’ve been on CD years ago.

It’s difficult to overstate just how good a live band Crowded House was. Part of the reason Neil Finn closed the books on Split Enz was to focus on a less “produced” sound that could be more faithfully captured on stage. At least that was the idea before the band teamed up with producer Mitchell Froom, who added churchy organ solos, sampled strings and horns, to name just a few of the touches which meant that the group couldn’t tour without a keyboard wizard in tow. But even with that in mind, the band pulls it off incredibly well here. Songs like “Private Universe” and “Hole In The River,” already more than listenable, take on new life here. (Even with two studio versions of “Private Universe” out there, I consider this performance to be the definitive reading.)

Farewell To The World was already a historical document of sorts, but with Paul Hester’s tragic death, it becomes even moreso. Paul gets his moment in the spotlight during “Sister Madly”, serving as both drummer and comedian, though his impression of Tina Turner falls a little bit flat when robbed of its visual component (file it under “you had to be there”); I’m a little surprised it’s actually on the CD at all. I don’t recall hearing “Italian Plastic” on the previous video release either. To say the whole band is on top form is a bit of an understatement, and I’ve especially got to single out Mark Hart’s luxurious walls of electric guitar feedback, never overpowering but always atmospheric.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Farewell on CD is that it was a bit of, for the lack of a better term, “stealth marketing” presaging the return of Crowded House to the studio and the stage. I’m eagerly awaiting the new album and tour, but I can truthfully see where both camps are coming from (Pro-Crowdies Reunion vs. Get Back Together But Don’t Call It Crowded House Without Paul). As with the reunion itself, it’s too bad that it took a tragedy to finally get this into our CD players.

Order this CD

    Disc one:
  1. Mean To Me (4:11)
  2. World Where You Live (3:33)
  3. When You Come (5:54)
  4. Private Universe (5:35)
  5. Four Seasons In One Day (2:54)
  6. Fall At Your Feet (3:25)
  7. Whispers & Moans (4:30)
  8. Hole In The River (6:47)
  9. Better Be Home Soon (4:43)
  10. Pineapple Head (4:04)
  11. Distant Sun (4:51)
  12. Into Temptation (4:49)
  13. Everything Is Good For You (4:09)
    Disc two:
  1. Locked Out (3:49)
  2. Something So Strong (3:51)
  3. Sister Madly (4:54)
  4. Italian Plastic (3:51)
  5. It’s Only Natural (5:07)
  6. Weather With You (5:22)
  7. There Goes God (4:54)
  8. Fingers Of Love (5:35)
  9. In My Command (4:26)
  10. Throw Your Arms Around Me (2:57)
  11. Don’t Dream It’s Over (6:22)

Released by: Capitol
Release date: 2007
Disc one total running time: 59:25
Disc two total running time: 51:08

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Categories
2002 Film Neil Finn R Soundtracks

Rain – music by Neil Finn

3 min read

Order this CDNeil Finn’s first foray into film scoring is an interesting mix of new songs and moody instrumental pieces. The songs and score tracks alternate for much of the CD, dividing things up nicely and creating quite a tapestry of different moods. “You Don’t Know” kicks things off with a dark, slinky feel and some outstanding vocal harmonies (not unlike the underrated Finn Brothers album), which brings me neatly to one other point – a lot of the vocal numbers on this soundtrack are almost “mini-songs,” very short in duration and sparse on lyrics (check out “Boat Joyride”, barely a minute long). “Summer Intro” quotes an infectious melody that later forms the basis of the song “Drive Home”, followed by “Summer Of Love”, a Finn/Edmund McWilliams collaboration on a song written by McWilliams. Again, vocal harmonies are to the fore. Elsewhere on the album, standouts include Lisa Germano’s “Cry Wolf” and her violin-driven instrumental “Phantom Love”, the eastern-influenced Finn instrumental “Red Room”, and another Finn/McWilliams collaboration, “Drive Home”, which is an instrumental for the first half of the song before the vocals ever kick in. Rounding things off is Neil’s son Liam Finn (of Betchadupa as well as his dad’s touring act) with “Lucid Dream”, an instrumental version of a song from the new Betchadupa album Alphabetchadupa. Perhaps the most out-of-place item here is a 1970 number from Human Instinct, a very, very Move-like late 60s/early 70s New Zealand rock group. In a way, it’s out of place for being the oldest song on the CD, but with the lo-fi production utilized on much of the soundtrack, it also fits in quite nicely, ironically enough.

It’s important to point out that, unlike film or stage music by, oh, say, Peter Gabriel, the soundtrack from Rain is not a wasteland of previously-released material minus the vocals. Liam’s singular contribution aside, Neil Finn’s material is all-original here. The only thing it references is other tracks on this album – and last time I checked, that’s called a theme, something which comes in mighty handy 4 out of 4when you’re doing music for a movie or a TV show.

Overall, it’s quite an effective freshman film music outing, one that makes me hope Neil Finn might try this again sometime – just so long as he keeps turning out his own music as well instead of, oh, say, spacing solo albums ten years apart from each other.

  1. You Don’t Know – Neil Finn (song) (2:55)
  2. Summer Intro – Neil Finn (score) (1:39)
  3. Summer Of Love – Neil Finn & Edmund McWilliams (song) (2:52)
  4. Mum In Bed – Neil Finn (score) (0:57)
  5. Orange And Blue – Neil Finn (song) (2:29)
  6. Red Room – Neil Finn (score) (3:05)
  7. Cry Wolf – Lisa Germano (song) (4:57)
  8. The Affair – Neil Finn (score) (3:41)
  9. Black Sally – Human Instinct (song) (6:35)
  10. Boat Dawn – Neil Finn (score) (1:17)
  11. Boat Joyride – Neil Finn (song) (1:01)
  12. Kids Floating – Neil Finn (score) (1:09)
  13. Batman – Neil Finn (score) (1:59)
  14. Shower – Neil Finn (score) (1:35)
  15. Phantom Love – Lisa Germano (score) (3:22)
  16. Drive Home – Neil Finn & Edmund McWilliams (song) (5:39)
  17. Lucid Dream – Liam Finn (song) (4:17)

Released by: EMI New Zealand
Release date: 2002
Total running time: 49:29

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Categories
1992 Non-Soundtrack Music S Split Enz

Split Enz – Rear Enz

Split Enz - Rear EnzCollected here in one easy-to-grab chunk is the entire ’80s career of Split Enz, courtesy of Mushroom Records. Normally I rail against labels reissuing the unpteenth iteration of a band’s greatest hits, but since we’re getting the whole albums here, I can honestly give you hearty recommendations for this set. My big gripe with the five original albums included in this 6-CD box set has nothing to do with sound quality – everything was cleaned up by Enz keyboard whiz Eddie Rayner for this re-release – but everything to do with packaging. When the Split Enz 70s box set was released, there was at least some attempt to retain the original LP artwork, front and back, in some form. Not so here – and I wouldn’t be griping unless this omission involved the best back-cover art ever, Time & Tide‘s photo montage. Okay, so maybe that’s something not everyone’ll see as a problem, but it honked me off a bit. As I noted, had the same effort not been made for the 70s set, I would have shrugged it off more easily.

The real treasure here is the sixth disc, a bonus CD of non-album B-sides, demos and other rarities. Much more entertaining than the first box set’s disc of extras, this one is a solid slice of studio material with no live cuts (and really, why bother when The Living Enz has this part of the band’s career covered so well?). “Fire Drill” is an early Tim/Neil Finn collaboration (with Eddie Rayner getting a credit as well), and makes one wish that the Finn brothers had written more Split Enz material together – it’s definitely hit material. “Next Exit”, written by Tim and released as a stopgap single between albums in 1983, is another guilty favorite of mine – it’s goofy as hell lyrically, and yet still listenable. Other Tim songs – “Big Heart”, “Parasite”, “In The Wars”, “Remember When” – all have their own quirky appeal.

The real fascination here is the chance to witness – in an aural way at any rate – the evolution of songs that would later see release in other forms. Neil’s “I Walk Away” is heard in two early forms (“Your Inspiration” and the surprisingly disco-fied “Love & Success”, though portions of the latter became “Can’t Carry On”), with drastic steps yet to be made in both lyrics and the structure of the song’s melody itself. Even more revealing is Tim’s “Mr. Catalyst”, a jumpy dance tune which would be given entirely new lyrics and held back until his second solo album, Big Canoe, where it became “Spiritual Hunger” – though certain Eddie Rayner-penned instrumental breaks were lifted out of it completely and transplanted to Neil’s “Years Go By” on the final Split Enz album to great effect. Rayner also contributes an instrumental number all his own, “Over Drive”.

4 out of 4And the money shot of the Rear Enz bonus disc? Easy one – Neil’s “Serge”, a song dating back to his pre-Enz days in a band called After Hours (when it was titled Late In Rome). While it’d be easy to say that Rayner’s synth-sampled strings make the song, it’s a lovely example of Neil’s early ballad writing. (And it’s no surprise that it was a fan favorite in Crowded House’s live shows.)

Order this CDThe first five discs in this set are also available separately and have been reviewed previously: True Colours, Corroborree, Time & Tide, Conflicting Emotions and See Ya Round.

  1. Fire Drill (3:11)
  2. Your Inspiration (3:27)
  3. Parasite (2:44)
  4. Next Exit (4:15)
  5. Over Drive (4:17)
  6. Serge (4:06)
  7. In The Wars (4:08)
  8. Love & Success (3:43)
  9. Big Heart (3:41)
  10. Mr. Catalyst (2:59)
  11. Remember When (3:50)

Released by: Mushroom
Release date: 1992
Bonus disc total running time: 44:24

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