Download podcast: Courtney Smith’s review of Champagne in Seashells
Download MP3: Liam Finn “Plane Crash”
Liam Finn is a musical legacy. His is the son of Neil Finn, who is famous in his own right, but more so for bands Crowded House and Split Enz. The latter band was started by his brother Tim Finn, Liam’s uncle, who also joined in to record and tour with Crowded House for one of their later albums, Woodface.
Liam Finn has been known to play in Crowded House himself, including a Coachella performace in 2006, and had his own band prior to going solo called Betchadupa (Polish slang for “you bet your ass”). Together they make up one of New Zealand’s most famous and respected musical families. In fact, I once saw an MTV interview with Flight of the Conchords, New Zealand’s newest famous export, where they asked why American interviewers constantly asked if they’d met Neil Finn. They had, and were curious as to why they kept getting asked about it.
Basically, where Liam Finn started out and where you started out as musicians are not the same. It’s like rich people who start their family members out as vice presidents of their companies at the age of 25. Sure they eventually have to do a lot of hard work over the years, but they get to skip the grunt work and skip straight to the $100,000+ salary with benefits. Liam Finn’s got a leg up, but not so much that you hate him–just enough so that he got to open for Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder in 2008, but you still haven’t heard his music.
That’s likely because Finn, who splits his time between London and New Zealand, is signed to a small label in the U.S. called Yep Roc who have a stable of older indie-minded artists (John Doe, Robyn Hitchcock, Nick Lowe) but not many of the new hot buzz bands that the Internet lovers of Gens X & Y like to get all worked up over. In a way this sort of label is fitting for Finn, because one listen to his debut album I’ll Be Lightning and the debt to The Beatles’ more eccentric recordings, specifically John Lennon’s work in the early Yoko Ono years with songs like “Honey Pie” and “Revolution Number 9,” becomes glaringly apparent.
Finn played all the instruments, handled the engineering and even shot the press photos for his first album, recording it live to analog tape. He used looping software and equipment to create a one man band record. The obvious thing to do would have been to enlist a backing band when he went on tour so Finn could stand up front and sing. Instead, he chose to perform as a one-man act for much of the time he spent supporting that first album, jumping from drums to guitar to theremin, using effects pedals and looping to make the full sound of a band in a rowdy rock show with just himself on stage.
It’s an amazing spectacle well worth seeing and it makes you think. One of the reasons The Beatles stopped touring was that it became impossible for them to recreate their increasingly complicated recordings on stage. If they had access to even some of Finn’s equipment, with the four of them on a stage, what might have happened at a concert?
Finn’s first album isn’t all hard edges and raucous, however. There are moments when he seems to coo into the mic and you can see he is his father’s son. Even in those calm, pop song moments where Finn’s voice is lulling you his guitars are double looped over each other in the background doing something entirely unexpected. It’s the kind of trick an engineer on a John Mayer album will pull but go out of his way to hide from the listener–Finn instead goes out of his way to emphasize how unusual his instrumentation is but pairs it with harmonizing that makes you feel like you’re inside a pop song that isn’t just the same old pandering, patronizing top 40.
Somewhere along the way on his lonely journey Finn’s musical muse, Eliza Jane Barnes joined him on the road as a back-up vocalist and to help with some small instrumentation. No kidding, the press release for his newest EP Champagne In Seashells, which credits Barnes and Finn equally as co-performers, refers to her as his musical muse. In “Almost Famous” that was code for groupie. Today it is clearly more than that, although it is decidedly unclear if the two are further entangled beyond their musical relationship and friendship. The ambiguity is refreshing and allows the listener that much more room to project their own ideas onto Finn’s newest release, which amplifies his auditory sucker punch of noise approach and ends with the most delightful stalker ballad I’ve heard since Elvis Costello’s “I Want You.”
Finn seems to feel the freedom to be even more aurally all over the place with the Champagne EP, which makes me wonder where he will head with his next full length. He showcases so much of his signature studio development sound that the quiet moments come as a welcome reprise and offer an interesting glimpse behind Finn’s studio board.
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