Stranger than Fiction, Larger Than Life: the Finn Brothers song-by-song discussion thread

What, there's that merry band of outlaws in Sherwood Forest,isn't there and that horrible dictator John? Sounds interesting to me.

 

That's a fabulous title!

 

Yes, but nowadays you mainly get city councillors more interested in paving paradise and putting up parking lots in Midlands cities.

 

They're 20 miles away in the beautiful village I grew up in. One of the most remarkable musical events of my life happened when Crowded House played an outdoor gig in Sherwood Pines, which is no more than a couple of miles from where I grew and next door to one of the places I used to work. It being a small village (although that's subjective - I'm sure some US cities have smaller populations than the 3,500 that inhabit Edwinstowe), it was all rather surreal.

But anyway, we were talking about Nottingham. It has it's good sides and bad sides, but none of 'em are exotic.

Now back to the music...

 

"Aurora Day" has an eerie feel that makes the track weirdly appealing. There's a haunting melancholy in both the lyrics and in Tim's delivery of them and this is enhanced by the blend of the acoustic guitar, the subtle atmospheric keyboards and the strangeness of the backing vocals. Not the strongest of melodies, but still an interesting track.
3,4/5

 

"Aurora Day" is a decent song, but by this point the project has begun to lose a bit of its appeal. The melody once again is nothing special, and Tim's broken voice is beginning to be a bit painful to listen to. The lyrics once again are bizarre and interesting, but with one word portrait after another they begin to lose their novelty.

It may just be a failure of imagination on my part, but I absolutely cannot see this as an appealing stage production. A series of animated shorts (as Lance suggested), maybe.

3/5

 

This is like a half-comedic song to me. It's really lovely and atmospheric and everything, but the lyrics are so wildly obscure, they sometimes make me laugh. Not because they're bad, but because they're just so over the top. "...Three purple rays, that circled overhead, and me in my dressing gown, staring like I'm dead" cracks me up. It's just such a "what the hell?" lyric.

I still actually like this quite a lot. Spooky and strange with weird vocal exorcisms or whatever going on in the background, it's really effective. Still wishing Tim would released this stuff plus maybe a few more from these sessions officially. They're certainly good enough for it.

4.2/5

 

I agree. There is really no evidence that this was or is intended for the stage.

To me it feels like something he got out of his system: took a listen and thought “oh I’m done with these, I don’t know what the hell they are, I’ll just release them for free.”

 

Our votes for "Aurora Day"

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Average: 3.2563

 

I don't know.Part of me wishes the same, but what would be the incentive to release it on physical form or even through platforms like Spotify which at the very least require lawyer's fees and agents fees?

And then, if it were released on physical form, he might want to re-record them properly....It's expensive.

It's not like it's going to hit the Top 40. (By the way, I totally hear the Still Life connection you mentioned --also sounds just a bit like The Magnificent Nose. I have a feeling that a lot of his solo work would sound like Still Life if he called all the shots and didn't let his collaborators have their head.. It's not a bad sound! I certainly prefer it to Langer & Winstanley's arragnements. And I also agree there's a darkly comic element to some of these songs.)

.Ultimately, Tim would probably have to pay probably thousands of dollars to get it out for that that he would not recoup without touring and it seems to me that he cancels more concerts than he gives nowadays. And he knows that all but a bare few are going to give it a collective "Huh?", anyway.

This way he gets it out there, quick and easy for free, just uploads it and walks away: he doesnt have to worry about promotion or playing shows or doing interviews. He just moves on to the next project, and forgets about it. "Make a piece of art and throw it in a river", like the ALT song says. It's literally a religious thing for him.

I am glad we got these in any form and that they are not bootlegs. I very much look at this this is an official release.

It's something put up on a free platform by the artist for anybody who wants to hear. No one really makes a profit from it: Tim probably lives off of royalties of a few songs nowadays (especially "Weather With You") and investments and the odd theatre project: this is just a gift for fans.

I'd be fine if Tim released more like this. Why should he spend thousands of dollars or work his tail off at 70 just so people can complain and moan about how ragged his voice is and compare his success to Neil's?

That misses the entire point of it from his point of view which is that he's still pumping out songs at 70 -- more than ever, seemingly, judging from all the theatre projects he's done in the last decade.

 

Today's song is "Gloria Tremayne"

gloria tremayne results on SoundCloud - Listen to music

The architect Miles Van den Star
Designed a house for a movie star
His wife who then went by the name
Of Gloria Tremayne

She murdered him within those walls
The sands saw sails (?) absorbed it all
The living hell, the pyschic pain
Of Glora Tremayne

The house itself was driven insane
By Miles Van den star
And Gloria Tremayne
Deformed and split apart
The psychotropic domain
Of Gloria Tremayne
Gloria Tremayne.

 

That's very true, I didn't think about that. It's a shame how expensive that process must be. I guess I just wished that I could actually own the material in case one day it were to just up and vanish from SoundCloud. It's highly unique and mostly great quality material. But you are right, it's likely not worth it monetarily, and some people certainly would be put off by the vocals.

Yeah, the keyboards in "Leonora Chanel" (and the song in general in some ways) reminds me a lot of "Making a Mockery". I like Before and After a lot, but yes there is a certain charm and looseness to the Still Life stuff. It's really a unique sound Tim captured with those songs.

 

What a fantastic backing track. Very basic, but very effective. It's quite spacey, but with pretty cohesive melodic texture. The twisted lyrics coexist pretty appropriately with the music. The lack of much going on makes it feel a little like a sparse demo, though. I'm assuming that's just what Tim is going for here. Really interesting stuff.

4/5

 

Gloria Tremayne

Unfortunately this is the track out of this group of tracks that I like the least. I don't hear a proper melody here. It sounds like the kind of thing that someone would improvise.

The backing track is highly synthetic. Different from anything else I remember Tim doing. But, the whole thing just doesn't work for me. I'm not sure that I can think of something else done by Tim that I like less.

2.1/5

 

This song strikes me as the funniest song of them all.

Mainly the serious, profound tone of voice sounds like he's winking at me(especially when he goes up to the "gloria Tremayne" bit) and the incredibly slow pace of this just amuses me. It's like a pop song that got put in slow motion, and he is not going to sing this any way but incredibly slow no matter what you think you want. Charming.

3.5/5

 

I agree that it's a total gift to fans and probably satisfying for Tim to just put it out there. There is no real commercial appeal per se that's worth investing in agents, lawyers etc. But there is part of me that would like it released formally (maybe in a box set or something). Part of that could just be my laziness, but I'm a bit alarmed at how much music I have on this computer, and on my phone, and on CD and no way or really unifying it all. While I appreciate all my digital devices, the one thing I know is that you tend to forget what you have unless you see it, and I don't normally scroll through my digital music files all that much to put on a piece of music for the evening. (To be fair, I'd say the same thing about digital photos - you take a ton, but unless you get on it and print the faves, you probably won't see most of them again).

My point is that I'm much more likely to idly flick through my CDs when I'm not sure what I want to listen to, and let curiousity or inspiration hit, than scroll through my digital files on my computer. (But again, that could just be my laziness - I realize it could be transferred off my computer to a different media).

EDIT: I just saw @drewrclv9 comment and yes, I also live in perpetual dread of stuff going missing off platforms or being mysteriously unavailable. I've had this happen with Enz stuff off iTunes. I like owning my favorite stuff.

 

Gloria Tremayne - I like the backing track, don't really care for the song. Although again, the lyrics hint at the story enough that I definitely am going to track down Vermillion Sands. That's some strange set of stories...

2/5 (I hope the backing track gets recycled into a more accessible song one day!)

 

Well I can certainly relate to this. I downloaded a lot of free (illegal) music 10-12 years ago as eventually realized a)I don’t need every Rod Stewart album and maybe not even one and b) I’m more likely to listen if I pay for it and c) I’m more likely to listen to music from a CD than I am a digital source for a mysterious reason I can’t understand. mysterious Because I just rip CDs to lossless and listen to them digitally anyway and never touch the CD again!! But I still prefer it!

I’ve made mp3 copies of these songs we’re discussing. I’d love a Tim box that collated his non-album songs including a few songs that have never been on a digital medium—there are a ton of them all told. That would be Ann instant purchase for me.

But I just don’t think it will happen because the market isn’t there. I don’t think it will happen for Neil either for the same reason, not enough copies sold to justify the printing.

What I do hope is that Tim will someday get it together and put a bunch of stuff up on Soundcloud, as Neil has done with the Kitchen Sink albums and as Tim did with those demos ten years ago. But he has so much.

And I guess as long as he keeps making songs for projects he is probably more interested in those than his archives.

 

Hey, I'd love a Tim deluxe box set. I'd give over a lot of money for that simply because it's so hard to find some of the albums. I mean, it's basically impossible to find The Conversation, and it had a commercial release!
If they could combine all his albums plus say a few extras I'd be in with that. I'd really like to hear some of the theatrical stuff as a recording because I think it's such an interesting phase of his career.

If only there were an @Jaffaman for Tim's work!

 

There is a (1)copy of The Conversation on discogs for 80 bucks. Plus shipping…VAT…and customs duty.

Glad I already have it.

 

"Gloria Tremayne" - what to say here - it's the one so far that most clearly illustrates that this was a novelty effort and this song in particular a novelty piece. I listened to it on headphones and the ultra-synthetic left-right strobing on the vocals was *really* irritating to me.

2.5/5

 

"Gloria Tremayne" is a fascinating track. I like the contrast between the very prominent keyboard at the forefront of the song and the low-key and very subtle one in the background. Again, the lyrics and the way Tim performs them make me curious to read the book.
3,6/5

 

Well I thought I purchased a copy of The Conversation some time ago and when it arrived it was a CD-R...I'm glad I didn't pay huge bucks for it, but I could have (it turns out) got that from my sister for nothing but an email. She actually has a genuine version...

My point stands though. Some of these albums are hard to get and I'd gladly buy a legit copy even if I had to buy an entire box set to make it happen...

 

One of the problems with "Gloria Tremayne" (a problem shared by some of the other songs), is that the macabre twist seems to come out of nowhere. An architect designed a house for a movie star, and then his wife murdered him. Wha?

the slow pace doesn't really bother me, but the arrangement seems gimmicky, and the song kid of just ends, which isn't satisfying. This is probably my least favorite of this collection so far.

2/5

 

Our votes for "Gloria Tremayne"

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Average: 2.8143