Caught By The Heart - Tim Finn and Phil Manzanera

New collaboration!

Details here:

Caught By The Heart

 

Cool.

 

Tim and Phil having a chat:

 

Received a copy in the mail today (signed by Phil). Got a chance to listen to it once. The music has a very strong Latin influence. Will need to listen more to the album. Phil's guitar work is beautiful. Tim's voice is not quite how I remember.... Anyone else heard it?

 

I adore this album. I didn't realize there was a dedicated thread -- we've just finished our song by song discussion of it on the Finn Brothers song by song thread. Herés my review:

I think this is a great album and it's probably the first album by Tim that I wouldn't cut any songs from since Imaginary Kingdom (which increasingly looks to me like his best solo album: his most varied and consistent and non-hodge-podgey, with no dodgy contributions from washed up 80s producers.)

Tim and Phil make a very good songwriting and producing pair -- I think the potential was there on the Southern Cross but that album is sadly a bit marred by eighties production and bit of CD Bloat Syndrome -- and the fact that Tim left the project before it was finished. I really hope that Tim and Phil release the other 13 songs they have in the can (or better yet, just release the ten best songs from those.)

I hear Tim more than ever touching on his own mortality on this album, which fits -- in a way that at times gives me chills and brings a tear tomy eye -- the aged voice singing the songs. I simply don't think a muscular, heroic voice like young Tim's or Harper's would suit the great majority of these songs. This is an album whose lyrics subtly touch on nostalgia for times long, long past, for past loves and past lives, and places in the past; it touches on empty nest syndrome, encroaching mortality, and the worsening enviroment. Yet all that makes it seem maudlin and it's not. There is joy in this album, the feeling of an eternal dance that continues on and on throughout our long lives and continues without us after we've gone. Tim's children, Harper and Elliot's cameos reinforce that, offering fleeting glimpses of youth like a holiday photo that's faded with the years.

It's an album by elderly men who have long-since embraced their maturity -- the middle aged angst of Tim's 90s work and the middle aged marital comfort of 00's has been replaced by something even wiser: this is the work of a 70 year old man (nearly) and it feels like it. And you know, that's something I love about Neil and Tim that has occurred to me many time over the past nearly three years.

The fact that they write songs that you can relate to as you age; the fact that they write songs for their age.

The backing tracks, mostly Phil's work, are beautiful, rooted in classical music and Latin rhythms, African, Israeli German, Cuban, Colombian musicians all adding very distinct flavors while Phil Manazanera gets a chance to let his beautiful guitar playing shine: always lovely, never too flashy, grounded in emotion.

My one quibble, of course, is the sound.

This has that that washed out sound that Dreamers Are Waiting had, a product of matter-of-course compression and home recording: it is sometimes all too clear that, despite the work that's gone into mixing it as well as possible, these parts were recorded in different places with different tools.

Strange sounding vocals have been a feature (by which I mean, in this case, a bug) of Tim's work since Imaginary Kingdom and the partially home recorded "Winter Light."It's just clear that Tim's recording into a Macbook Pro or something at home, or an iPhone. They are overly dry and, I don't know, kind of "lossy mp3" sounding at times.

ON the other hand, as I mentioned in some previous post, home recording may be the way to go (and a small price to pay) for Tim as he can then record when he's having a good day voice-wise, as I guess that he has good days and bad days...and of course, had the global lockdown never happened, this album would perhaps have never happened either.

So thank you to my favorite virus. It's wonderful how human beings can take the hand they've been dealt and make it into something beautiful with a bit of creativity and imagination.

 

Daily Mail names Caught By The Heart one of the Top 12 albums of ‘21.
From Billie Eilish to Self Esteem and Afterlight: The top 12 albums of 2021 | Daily Mail Online

 

Bump, because you linked Split Enz' "I See Red" in the XTC Song by Song thread.

I just discovered these guys put out a disc last year. Going to pour me a drink and have me a listen!

 

The follow up album, The Ghost of Santiago, is out July 29th.

https://finnmanz.com/tim-and-phil-announce-second-collaboration-album/

 

Tim And Phil's follow up album The Ghost of Santiago, was released last Friday, I ordered from Burning Shed and also received, as a surprise, a live album 801 Live @Hull by Phil Manzanera.