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

apologies mate
Want me to delete that, while I still can?

 

Up to you! Doesn't bother me at all.

 

My understanding is that the producer, David Russell, I believe, didn't really "produce" the album, but was rather too laidback and may have seen Split Enz as another band of nobodies that would be gone in a year's time, so why bother?

So they basically did their live show, with some sweetening, not really knowing how to produce an album themselves.

In the end, they were just not satisfied with the album's sound; thought it could have been recorded/produced better. Besides that, for Second Thoughts, they had Rob Gillies back in the band on horns and Wally Wilkinson on lead guitar was out. Nothing against Wilkinson, who had some very nice moments in the Enz, but the band did sound better with Gillies in it.

Futhermore, I believe that on Second Thoughts the Judd/Finn songwriting partnership had largely dried up; Phil wrote a few new songs, but Tim didn't yet have the confidence to write songs on his own, so they ended up re-recording songs for Second Thoughts, which was their introduction to the wider world, Mental Notes having only been released in Australia and NZ, I believe. To make it more confusing, Second Thoughts was called Mental Notes in the rest of the world, and had a similar cover, but with a shaven headed Phil Judd.

 

As Lance said, I also find the earlier, unreleased (at the time) version of “Spellbound” to be better than the Mental Notes version. I just can’t get over my aversion to Judd’s singing style. I still like the song, but his vocal here is an obstacle for me. 3.2/5.

 

He certainly is unusual .... he was a little more normal with the Swingers single.

 

Today's song is "Mental Notes." (Accidentally posted yesterday.) Deleted and now it's BACK.



This song was written and sung by Phillip Judd.

 

"Mental Notes" is more of an album capper than a song proper and I suppose it's great for what it is. It's intentionally grating, foreshadowing the post-punk bands that Judd would form after leaving the Enz, perhaps. It's hard to rate, as it's not really a song at all.

I'll give it a 5/5 as an "album cap" but probably just a 2/5 as a stand-alone song.

 

We can also take this opportunity to discuss the Mental Notes album proper.

 

Mental Notes sounds like no other album before or since, really. Well, except perhaps for Second Thoughts. It has a live feel to it that kind of works for me: one criticism often levelled at the Finn Brothers various projects is that they fail to capture their live energy on stage and I think that is certainly true, especially for Crowded House, many of whose live versions completely blow away studio songs.

So there's that.

Overall, I think I prefer the rerecordings on Second Thoughts to the ones on this one: the live spark is missing, but the arrangements are tighter and the truth is I just think that Rob Gillies makes the band better. Which is not to detract from Wilkinson's work. However, I heard the Second Thoughts songs first, and found Eddie's synth-horns to be a rather poor sub for Gillies magnificent work. And Wilkinson's work here, as opposed to the earlier singles where he really shone, seems rather superfluous, to be honest.

In my opinion, early Enz sounds best on Dizrhythmia. (Though the line up had technically changed, it is obviously Chunn, Crowther and Judd's arrangement touches all over that album, more so than Griggs, Green or Neil Finn's.) It's as if it took them a few albums to learn how to present their multitude of ideas succinctly. There are no fewer ideas on Dizrhythmia, but the songs don't sprawl and they become arrangmeent ideas more than disparate song-writing ideas.

So I see everything before that, album-wise, as working towards that end goal of catchy but colorful and dense art pop/rock.

Back to this album: It's a pretty good debut, and, as I mentioned there's something about it that draws casual listeners in as it's one of the few albums I've played that genuinely got people interested in it, so I give it props for that.

I would rate the album a solid 3.5/5.

 

I like the album, it is a good debut.
I think for the most part the Enz were a different kind of band, and even when they went more mainstream, they still had their own sound and style.
Here they give us a taste of their quirkiness and it is a good flavour, over the next few years the solidify and tighten and get better and better.

Mental notes (album) 3.5/5

 

"Mental Notes" is such a touching, moving track. The emotional candor is just palpable.

(Okay, so not really.....1.8)

 

Many's the night I've wept as its sweet strains swept over me.

 

Capping Mental Notes, it's an album I quite like despite its quirks and flaws. It definitely showed that Split Enz was a band with considerable promise and talent, even if subsequent years would prove quite tumultuous and the band would find its greatest expression in a somewhat different mode than that suggested by their debut. Change would be coming relatively quickly, with the upcoming release of another non-LP single (or at least the single version was different) and then an overseas trip to London to record their second album with a "name" (at the time, at least) producer.

 

Our votes for "Mental Notes"
1-0
2-2
3-0
4-0
5-0

 

Today's song is the bonus track from the "Oddz and Enz" collection, "Nightmare Stampede."



I know little about this song. I assume it is a Judd/Finn composition. From the sound of it, it sounds like it Rob Gillies is back. Mylene earlier mentioned that this was recorded in 1976.

 

In a way this song kind of is quintessential 75-76 era Enz. Lots of ideas, seperated by even more ideas, until the actual song just seems like another arrangment idea. It's also very, very long --criminally long--at 14 minutes.

To be honest, I find it hard to sit through all 14 minutes of this. For all it's inventiveness, it doesn't grab me. The slightly unclear sound is part of this, no doubt, but it's also the fact that it just seems like the most early Enz-y of early Enz songs. I feel like If I listen to any random 20 second part of the song, I enjoy those twenty seconds, but I just can't go along for the whole journey. But if I look at it as a whole album side, (and it's long enough to be one) then I start seeing it as a collection of songs, which it would have been in the hands of most bands.

You have to admire the discipline: think of how much rehearsing they would have had to do to pull off these songs! It's staggering.

Then I start to enjoy the ride, especially Gillies' horn work. But not enough to want to listen again and again, which is key to really getting into a song. I'll give it a 2.5/5, I suppose. I want to give it more, but I just am not in the mood to be challenged this morning, I suppose. I do think that seeing it live would have been much, much better experience than listening to this live version at home.

Rob Gillies, who left the band after Dizrhymia, was a really great musician, up there with Eddie Rayner himself, in my opinion.

 

I have this as having been recorded live in Auckland on 2-19-76; apparently it was first released on the gold 1972-1979 box set in 1992 (on the "Oddz and Enz" disc). I pretty much agree with everything Lance wrote about this track - it's too long and, while it has some great melodic ideas in it, it's too messy and disorganized to hang together as a single song. I suppose this is the early Enz at the "proggiest", and it would interesting to know if they ever attempted a studio recording of this track (or even if some of the individual parts were ever cut out and turned into a separate song). I'll give it a 3/5, just for the audacity of it all.

 

2-19-76! Well, that's a coincidence.

 

While I like the image of a synthy yankee wrangler interacting with a horn-like “Nightmare Stampede” to get to sleep; Peter and the Wolf this is not.

There’s still a dreamy quality to it all that works in small doses but meanders too much for a 14 minute epic.

I bet it worked better in a live setting, especially if they tried improvising a bit on the instruments. It’s interesting but ultimately not that memorable...

2.19 / 5

 

Our votes for "Nightmare Stampede":

1-0
2-1
3-2
4-0
5-0

 

Today's song is "True Colours."



"True Colours" is another song I know little about. This version is live and progged up in early Enz style and was released on Oddz and Enz, a collection that was included in a box set called 1972-1979, released in 1992. Eddie and Tim also perform a verse of this song on the Anniversary live album from the nineties.

I assume this is a Judd/Finn composition, but I'm not sure.

There are other live versions on YouTube from the late seventies which feature slightly more pop-oriented arrangements than this one, but they have not been released on record so now is the time to discuss them!

 

"True Colours."

You know, I like it. I think this album would have made a fine addition to Second Thoughts. I think I do prefer some of the less cluttered arrangements on the post-Judd performances. The bare bones of this is a pretty conventional seventies rock ballad and I think that comes through. I like the trading lead vocals between PHil and Tim here, and final climactic musical tag is pretty rocking. Which, Split Enz was, after all, attempting to do: to rock. I don't love the song, but it's all right.
3/5

 

I think this is from the same early 1976 show as "Nightmare Stampede", shortly before their first trip to London to record their second album. It's a decent enough song but it doesn't really grab me; I wonder if they considered recording it a few years later for the album that took its title from this song? Or even if they ever attempted it in the studio at all? 2.8/5.

 

You have to remember that there was really nothing else in New Zealand like this at the time. Listening to Split Enz was both a pleasure and an education - the songs were unusual in both melodic, lyric and chordal structure. I have an original White Cloud pressing and it sounds incredible. To be honest New Zealand always had a bit of an inferiority complex when it came to music and Split Enz were the first band to put the country on the map globally - Second Thoughts as Mental Notes even got a review in Rolling Stone magazine - unheard of.

Although I like what came after, the original Mental Notes is the one I return to the most. It's a great band album but it carries the guiding spirit of Phil Judd, one of NZ's geniuses. The Judd/Finn songwriting team could have been one of the greats, perhaps seen at their best on the single Another Great Divide.

 

Our votes for "True Colours".

5-1
4-0
3-2
2-0
1-0