The Finn family firm

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

You sit down to talk to the Finn brothers and you wonder where to aim the microphone. It ends up pointing at the space between them.

Which is kind of apt. Because the territory between Neil Mullane Finn and Brian Timothy Finn - born Te Awamutu, 46 and 52 years ago respectively - remains the intriguing bit.

It's in that age difference which meant, they say, they grew up with little sibling rivalry - but which sparked in the younger Finn a drive which continues today even as his career should be entering its resting-upon-laurels stage.

It's the gaps between the intersections then divergences of their musical lives, which have combined once more with the album Everyone is Here, only the third in the many they've released in the past 30 or so years, to feature co-written songs.

It's in the interval between the notes of their fraternal harmonies, which on the new album again interlock like some piece of joinery where the component parts are indiscernible but enhanced in the end result.

Sometimes, though, they are singing the same notes in exuberant unison. That's something they haven't done since Weather With You from Crowded House's 1991 hit album Woodface, a set which marked the brothers' successful first attempt to write together despite their previous life in Split Enz.

The second one was the 1994 album Finn, a see-what-sticks affair on which they played all the instruments themselves. Recorded in a month, they delivered a rough-hewn album big on strange moods and melodic and lyrical quirks.

Everyone is Here has its eccentricities but it's not Finn: The Sequel.

"I spoke to somebody yesterday who had listened to Finn and this one back to back," says Tim, "and it felt to them like Finn was the opening act and this was the main act and I quite liked that."

The new one is far grander and more ambitious. It also had a protracted birth between Auckland and Los Angeles and London involving long-time Bowie producer Tony Visconti and long-time Crowded House collaborators Mitchell Froom and Bob Clearmountain.

It sounds as if, after a couple of solo albums each, which kept the fan club happy but didn't translate much further, that Team Finn wants to compete in the international pop league again.

"It's definitely dressed up in its finest clothes and we wanted that to be the case from the beginning," says Neil.

"We talked about that. We had time to reflect on the first ideas and hone the process. The songs went through quite a long process of being worked around and they all started in the same way as songs do - with moments of inspiration collectively and together and we worked on them and tried to make them exist in a really good place. We didn't really want to make Finn Mark Two."

Tim: "It's the first album that we've done together where one of us wasn't taking a side-step from another life. With the Finn album Neil still had Crowded House, with this one we've both done two solo albums in the interim. It's a level playing field in that sense."

The two sit on a couch in a studio at Neil's Newton Rd studio and offices. We've finally found a quiet spot between a builder's powertools and Dave Dobbyn, whose guitar can be heard echoing up the halls as he works on his next album.

In its previous incarnations the building, bought last year, has been a dance hall, Masonic lodge, home to a porn video outlet and an advertising agency. His wife Sharon runs her chandelier business - Sharondelier - out of one corner of the complex.

It also means the brothers now have somewhere, between their respective homes in Parnell and Mt Eden, where they can go to work at what is a family firm again.

And here's another gap - Everyone Is Here might be dressed up to the nines but on its sleeves are a heart or two. There's many a sense of family either behind or within the album.

One song, Disembodied Voices, paints a pictures of the brothers of 30-plus years ago, talking after the lights had gone out in the Te Awamutu family home.

"We used to share a room," says Neil. "Some of my earliest memories were lying awake at night and having really good conversations with Tim, spanning 10 years really. He would come home from university and I'd get the full run-down on all the nefarious goings which fuelled my imagination.

"We don't share rooms often any more. In fact, very rarely."

Unless the tour was going really badly.

Tim: "It would have to be going pretty badly. We've got families, don't forget."

The album certainly doesn't - the track Luckiest Man Alive, was penned by Tim on a night where his own clan expanded with his second child by wife Marie Azcona.

"It was written on the night that we had our baby daughter. You know those moments. Just feeling I had ended up with somebody pretty special, she's very right for me and we have a good time together. So I was just feeling lucky because it wasn't always the case for me and it took a long time to get there."

Neil: "You've put the heat on me now because I am obviously the second luckiest man alive."

Tim: "Sorry about that."

Neil: "I'm totally joking. I've written heaps of love songs and they are not as literal in my case because I tend to be like that. Dave Dobbyn is the one - he writes these beautiful emotional songs for his wife. He makes it tough for all of us. It's a hard thing to do to write a genuine declaration of love."

Tim: "It's not a hard thing to do when it comes and this one just came. They don't come often. To me it was a very easy song to write but there aren't many songs that I have got like that. And it has a key change. I've never used a key change. Ever."

If there's a one-for-all-exuberance to Everyone is Here , which hasn't been heard since Woodface, there are good reasons for that - two Finn brains and two Finn larynxes can be better than one when it comes to uplifting stuff.

Neil: "When you are writing together, you are being more outgoing with your ideas. You want something to engage the other person so you are less likely to be introspective or moody as you are in your own bedroom. As a result, a lot of the choruses we sing at the top of our range. When you are on your own, your choruses are sometimes more in the beautiful melancholy than the expansive."

There was another pivotal family event influencing Everyone Is Here.

As Neil told the Sydney Morning Herald: "If there were times when we felt it was too difficult or awkward to work with your sibling, we were drawn to persevering partly in our mother's memory, because she would've loved it. [Mary Finn died in 2000.] She would've loved us working together, because she was always anxious about us having separate careers. She thought one might do better than the other."

Talking of doing better, after the modest performances of their respective solo albums, do they need a hit?

Neil: "Er, no. As human beings, does anybody need a hit?"

Ones in the pop music business seem to.

Tim: "It depends what you mean by need. Personally, to be happy people? No. But there are expectations on this record.

"I would love it to reach a good wide audience but it does involve record company politics and whether they make it a priority and all the rest of it."

Neil: "It would be great to have a hit. There's no denying it. But if we were really intent on that and that was our sole motivation for making music we probably would have gone with [producer] Mutt Lange or something. He's had more hits than anyone else on the planet. We took a circuitous route to it.

"We took care with certain aspects of record making, as we did in the past, so that we would be presenting ourselves in the best possible light and that was going to give us a chance to have a hit.

"But when you look at the charts out there and you consider the odds, they are probably not that great. The album has a chance of winning people's attention because it is a likeable record and it's an outgoing record. The themes are clear and emotional. And all you can really hope is that it has a word-of-mouth aspect that will get it to a broad audience."

Neil says that despite the modest sales of his two solo albums, his last few tours stateside have increased audience numbers. The songs are still getting through.

"It's been a slightly contradictory movement to record sales and mysterious but in a way I kind of trust it because beyond the world of hit singles, which we've had good experience of and not so good experience with, there is a parallel universe of people listening to records and talking about them among themselves and communicating on the internet and coming to shows. And that doesn't necessarily get reflected in the mainstream industry."

Tim: "I hope it doesn't sound disingenuous but I still reckon that 20 years later is when you know how good a record was.

"I don't go out actually thinking about it much and I'm just glad the inspiration was there because once, in my early 40s, it wasn't, and I was actually thinking 'am I going to continue because I didn't know what to write about?' And I slowly, but surely, got my mojo back and it started clicking in about five or six years ago."

So what got the mojo back?

"A combination of things. Being with the right person and getting my life working. That was a big part of it. The other part of it was just starting to play live again for its own sake, not playing just to promote records but just doing gigs and actually enjoying them.

"I used to get quite fraught going out to promote an album if it wasn't really working. Someone would tell you such and such a station isn't playing your single, and it would affect my performance that night. It shouldn't but I lost my vibe for playing. Not totally but it started to corrupt that process and I started removing myself from that a bit and doing some gigs just for the sake of it and really loving them."

Between this interview and today the Finns have already done 20 dates across the United States before heading to Britain in October and Australia and New Zealand later in the year. Our talk ends in an odd but amusing digression about the rules of touring in a bus across America - no fireworks and no, er, serious ablutions aboard the vehicle.

We say goodbye and head out into an Auckland afternoon that has gone all very Four Seasons in One Day and still thinking about the space between them. And that even in the short time you've seen them facing this next stage, it's narrowed just that little bit more.

* * *

To Celebrate the release of the Finn brothers' album Everyone Is Here, EMI New Zealand and TimeOut are giving away the chance for five lucky fans to attend an exclusive album launch show at the end of this month, in Auckland. The five winners will each receive a double pass to the intimate show at a secret venue, as well as copies of the new album. To be in to win, you must answer the question: Name the Crowded House album on which both brothers appeared and write your answer, with your name, address and daytime phone number on the back of an envelope or postcard. And send it to

TimeOut Finn Brothers Competition

New Zealand Herald

PO Box 3290

Auckland

Entries must be received by August 24.