Harper Finn: 21-year-old singer-producer from music royalty

Harper Finn writes, records and produces his own tracks. Photo / Stephen Langdon

Harper Finn is making hypno-pop for the midnight soul. The 21-year-old singer-songwriter – son of Tim Finn, of Crowded House fame – debuts his first two singles tomorrow, Conversations With the Moon and Teenage Queen; two eclectic, expertly-produced tracks that glow with gothic auras and introspective, late-night lyrics.

Finn, unsurprisingly, has been playing music all his life – but his journey towards making his own was a largely solo discovery, void of any pressure or expectations linked to his family legacy. "The Finn family has been a massive part of growing up but in terms of the whole music thing, I never felt like there was any pressure for me to do music," he says.
"Growing up in the family, you could feel that expectation, the weight of it – especially in this country.

"Most of my teenage years, my dad has been semi-retired, and he's been writing for musicals – so him writing albums, touring, that's quite a distant memory to me now," he says. "Me doing music and him doing his thing, it doesn't really feel like we're stepping on each other's toes.

"When I was 13 I developed my music taste, and push comes to shove, I was starting to get into bands – it was quite a natural process. It didn't really feel like something that was forced upon me."

Finn spent his teenage years as playing keys in the eight-piece North Shore pop/hip-hop band Lakes, touring New Zealand and playing in bars despite being underage as a 17-year-old with bandmates in their early 20s. It was a fast education in life as an artist that became "really influential" on his solo work, he says.

"Having that lifestyle and being able to write, record, go out and play shows, connect with people in that way, that was quite a big turning point for me," he says. "It was in the band that I was like, 'this is the love and the passion and excitement and energy' – that's where it came from.

"At the tail end of that band, I developed my own songwriting and my own voice, and how I wanted to be as a solo voice, so it felt right to continue on after and keep going with my own songs."

The full-bodied, complex production on his songs is a marvel considering Finn writes and produces everything on his tracks, sketching them out on piano before moving to the production software Ableton. Conversations was mixed by Tony Buchen (Troye Sivan, John Butler Trio) and Teenage Queen by Kody Nielson; both boast a seamless blend of analogue and electronic instruments, a result of Finn's expanding palette.

"With Conversations, I didn't spend any time trying to perfect the sound," he says. "I chucked a mic on the piano, chucked heaps of distortion on it, cut it up, tried to sample it, make it feel more like a hip hop sample to make a traditional instrument sound fresh and contemporary.

"It's about not abandoning those mainstay instruments, but using them in a way which is quite fresh; messing it up, distorting it, cutting it up, smashing it round, trying to find something new."

Conversations focuses on a time in Finn's past when he was finishing high school; there was an end-of-year party that he left alone – "and maybe the intention at the start of the night wasn't to leave by myself" – and found himself wistfully wandering through empty suburban streets.

"It's that feeling when you're thinking out loud – I was walking home by myself, going, 'I wish this had happened, I wish I wasn't walking home by myself," he says. "It was a summer night, the moon was out, it felt right, and it felt quite visual for me.

"In New Zealand, you very rarely see people out; it's very quiet at that time," he says. "It's like a film set – you're walking around and there's no one around, you're kicking stones on the way home and you can basically just talk out loud. If anyone saw you, you'd look like a mad man, but it's a time for self-reflection. A few days later I was like, 'That's a song.."

While his modern, genre-mashing sounds is a far cry from his dad's famous tracks, Finn says Tim approves.

"He digs it," he says. "He's very good at keeping a distance, because he totally accepts that it's my thing and he's a good set of ears. He's probably a bit out of touch with popular music today but he'll identify a good song - and he said he likes my music, which is great."

LOWDOWN:
Who: Harper Finn
What: Debut tracks Conversations With The Moon and Teenage Queen
When: Tomorrow
Also: Single release tomorrow at Ding Dong Lounge, Auckland