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

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lance LaSalle, Jan 21, 2019.

  1. Paul H

    Paul H The fool on the hill

    Location:
    Nottingham, UK
    I'm Still Here works perfectly well as a little vignette, a snippet. My only gripe with it was that it was indexed as part of How Will You Go which made life very frustrating before the days of editing software.

    2/5.
     
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  2. HitAndRun

    HitAndRun Forum Resident

    I like it. It's a bit of fun, and one of the few examples of CH successfully getting a bit of fun on an album.

    I'm rating it as the hidden track:

    3.5/5
     
  3. Ryan Lux

    Ryan Lux Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, ON, CA
    Fair enough. I can tell you that my perspective at the time (a young fan of 13), was that I thought it was totally hilarious. So it definitely cemented my love of these guys. The witty, sometimes low brow, humour is a big part of CH that you'd never know existed without seeing them live. I'm just glad there's some record of that in the official catalog.

    And who agrees that Paul could've been a phenomenal lead singer if he wanted to? Great James Brown style singing (which is really hard to do well).

    3/5
     
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  4. jcr64

    jcr64 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Indiana
    Fair enough. I can definitely see "I'm Still Here" appealing to a 13 year old. I was rather older when Woodface was released.
     
  5. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    The I Like It Rare 3 compilation — all Paul solo songs — is very good. At least one is better than “Italian Plastic.” (For me.) Kind of quirky countryish, excellent double-tracked two-part harmony. Yes he was a very good singer, a rung below the Finns perhaps but
    a very good singer.
     
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  6. Paul H

    Paul H The fool on the hill

    Location:
    Nottingham, UK
    I have to confess that I found Hessie's solo career very disappointing. There's little there that I enjoy anywhere near as much as Italian Plastic and Skin Feeling.
     
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  7. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    I think that he was a developing a certain sound. Some sort of pleasing Indie/country/folk. He wasn't quite there.
    I don't think that he reached his potential, though. He wasn't quite there. Struggling with depression slowed him down.

    Maybe with a great producer...

    I have never heard the Largest Living Things EPs; the one song from Other Enz has a certain nineties grittiness to it that I like, but no great shakes. It makes me think that those EPs are probably less developed than the solo album.

    I was listening to Mark Hart's first solo album just today. He's definitely in many ways the greater musician technically; and his songwriting seems more developed, too. But he's a really weak lead singer, compared to Paul.
     
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  8. Ryan Lux

    Ryan Lux Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, ON, CA
    I agree that Paul never developed it fully. He didn't have the hours that Neil had, putting the time in. But he certainly had the vocal ability to be great, if he had.
     
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  9. jimbutsu

    jimbutsu WATCH YÖUR STEPPE

    I like "I'm Still Here" for what it is. It's cute, charming, whatever as a jarring bit of fun at the end of the record. I don't seek it out, but if I play the record all the way through, it will make my lips curl up at the edges as often as not.

    3/5
     
  10. Ryan Lux

    Ryan Lux Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, ON, CA


    Really great bit of promo for Woodface from the station that exposed me to the band, Muchmusic.
     
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  11. robcar

    robcar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    Yes. I was hugely frustrated, particularly as a Q reader at the time. I'd been reading the reviews of the album and interviews, etc., but couldn't buy it. I can't remember if I bought it on import or ended up waiting until the US release. Either way, I wasn't happy about it.

    Crowded House ended up being quite a profitable band for Capitol, but the way they got there certainly had its twists and turns.
     
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  12. robcar

    robcar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    I have a few CDs with hidden tracks before track 1 (in the "pre-gap"). Most CD players nowadays don't allow you to access them; I can rip them, but it is a bit of a pain.
     
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  13. Ryan Lux

    Ryan Lux Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, ON, CA
    Chris Bourke's book implies that they didn't pay back their advances until the Recurring Dream compilation.
     
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  14. robcar

    robcar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    Right, but that made a ton of money; all sales since then have been gravy. CH did quite well for Capitol.
     
  15. Michael Rofkar

    Michael Rofkar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Santa Rosa, CA
    That's hilarious. "We're huge in gay saunas."
     
  16. Michael Rofkar

    Michael Rofkar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Santa Rosa, CA
    I like that live freakout version of "I'm Still Here"! On the record, as a few others have said, it's a bit of a rude awakening. 2/5
     
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  17. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Our votes for "I'm Still Here"

    1 -0
    2-3
    3-5
    4-1
    5-0
    Average: 2.57
     
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  18. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Today's song is "Sacred Cow" written by Neil Finn, produced by Mitchell Froom and mixed by Tchad Blake for the original proto-Woodface album that was rejected.

    Spotify: Sacred Cow

    "Sacred Cow" was released in 1999 on the Afterglow compilation and was a promo single in the US.

    An earlier song, "You Got Me Going", had several elements in common with this one. We discussed that here:
    Stranger than Fiction, Larger Than Life: the Finn Brothers song-by-song discussion thread

    In an interview with Neil Finn that came with the original US issue of Afterglow in 2000, Neil Finn said this was another song that came about from Mitchell Froom putting two unreleated Neil Finn songs together, which "he was very good at." He said it was left of Woodface due to their being too many songs and the fact that he himself (Neil that is) didn't know what it meant. I distinctly remember him saying "religious figures that glow in the dark, sacred cows...what's it all mean?)

    Another shuffle, I don't know if Crowded House or Neil Finn has ever played the song live, but I certainly have never heard a live version.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2019
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  19. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    I simply love the music of "Sacred Cow". The shuffling beat and the twelve string jangle it opens with just captures my attention immediately, and there's a fast-paced energy to the song that continues thoughout the song.

    Neil's singing is passionate and he sounds genuinely angry. There's a bit of an Elvis Costello thing going on here, both in the angry confrontational lyric and Neil's singing. I also quite like the sax solo -- it's simple and melodic and sounds good. This is really the only sax solo I can recall in all of Crowded House's ouevre and it sounds refreshingly post-punk rather than Kenny G.

    The shuffling beat would have been the third song on three albums to use this: the drums sound a lot like "In the Lowlands" but Nick's bass is great, in my opinion, almost up to Jerry Scheff's work on "Now We're Getting Somewhere".

    I agree with Neil that the lyric is nonsense: or rather, I would say that the verses and lyric don't really connect that well; but I still think this is probably my overall favorite of the Woodface outtakes, most of which I really like. I'm docking it a bit for the lyric, but I love the music so much that I'm giving it a 4.4/5.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2019
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  20. robcar

    robcar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    I've never really been able to gain a strong appreciation for "Sacred Cow". I certainly don't think it's the equal of any track that made it onto Woodface. I think the opening shuffle and jangling guitar line are fine and I like the music on the verses, but the chorus just doesn't work at all for me. I don't think they work very effectively together, unlike other instances where Froom mashed together two separate Neil songs. I also have no idea what the lyrics are about and can't really glean any semblance of meaning out of them, which will always kill a song for me unless the music is utterly captivating (and this one isn't). This song sounds far more like Temple of Low Men to me than it does Woodface, and I suppose that may have been one of the factors that led to its exclusion from that album, not seeing release until 1999 on Afterglow.

    3.6/5
     
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  21. Otis82

    Otis82 Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Netherlands
    Once, as far as I know. Glasgow, 19 May 2010, “Sacred Cow” was partly woven into a performance of “Sister Madly”
     
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  22. Jaffaman

    Jaffaman Senior Member

    The melody of "Sacred Cow" was also tried out with Crowded House with different lyrics, under the title of "Cigarette Girl".
     
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  23. audiomac

    audiomac Forum Resident

    This is fantastic. Never seen it before. Thanks for sharing. They remind me of The Beatles; they were my Beatles.
     
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  24. audiomac

    audiomac Forum Resident

    Sacred Cow

    It's ok. I agree that it sounds more like a TOLM era track. I'm so glad actually that they moved away from that clinically clean production with Woodface being slight less bright and shiny, and then Together Alone with a complete change of producer.

    I'd give Sacred Cow a 2.75/5
     
  25. BeSteVenn

    BeSteVenn FOMO Resident

    Sacred Cow's music deserved a much better lyric. Other writers like Neil Young, Brian Wilson, Benny and Björn, and John Lennon have all been known to take a great set of chords and melody and write an entirely different set of lyrics. I'm sure there are many other examples. There is a Tim Finn song discussed earlier in the thread, but I don't recall which one. I wish Neil had done that with Sacred Cow because the music really is excellent.

    Despite his writer's block in the early days of Woodface, it is proof of Neil's unique depth of musical talent and originality that instead of laboring over a new set of lyrics, he discarded the whole song and moved on to the next one. I wish he had written new words, or turned it over to Tim. 4.2/5
     
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