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

Our votes for "Sacred Cow" double checked.

1-0
2-1
3-4
4-7
5-1
Average: 3.5846.

 

Today's song is "Anyone Can Tell", written by Neil Finn and produced by Mitchell Froom.

Spotify: Anyone Can Tell

This song was one of the original "proto-Woodface" tracks that got scrapped when the album was merged with the Finn brothers' record. It was released on the 1999 Afterglow compilation.

On the interview disc that came with the original US release of Afterglow, Neil said that it was yet another song that came about from Mitchell Froom putting two different Neil Finn songs together. If I remember correctly, Neil cited the lyric as being the reason. I'm not sure exactly why: I want to say he thought it didn't resolve, or it wasn't clear, or maybe he just didn't like it, but it's been 19 years since I heard that interview and I can't quite remember.

I've never heard a live version of this, neither by Neil Finn nor Crowded House.

 

Other than "My Telly's Gone Bung" I really like all of the Woodface outtakes (and all of Afterglow), and this is no exception.

There's a real contrast in the bright verses and the dark, melancholy pre-chorus: and I wonder if that's the part that Mitchell Froom put together? I've always felt like this song is about Neil's tangled views of religion and spirituality, in which faith in a higher power and an ideal afterlife is contrasted with visions of the dirty world and dark ambition and ego; the two incompatible yet coexisting just as the bright cheerful rock of the choruses and most of the verse contrast with the pre-chorus and the slightly menacing psychedelic coda. Like "Sacred Cow", I'm reminded simultaneously of both Temple of Low Men and Woodface, with this song. It is another missing link in the evolution.

I sort of get what Neil was saying about the lyric, but I think it's just as clear or clearer than some of of the Temple Of Low Men songs. But it's true, if Anybody Can Tell that Neil's not lying, neither can they really tell what he's really saying.

I think the the band really sounds great on this one, Paul's drum pattern is something new for Crowded House, Neil's guitar playing is as always solid and good and Nick's bass is pretty interesting; and Mitchell's understated keyboard touches add color to the song without overwhelming it.

Still, for me this is a second tier Crowded House song and not a peak like much of Woodface. I'll give it a 3.7/5.

 

A couple of the Split Enz albums were remixed for the 2006 remasters campaign, so that would certainly account for some of that. They were all mastered way too hot, unfortunately. We can be very glad that the Crowded House remasters didn't suffer the same fate.

 

"Anyone Can Tell" is, along with "Time Immemorial", one of the two essential outtakes from the prolonged Woodface sessions, in my opinion - and of these two, I like this one the best. In fact, it's probably my favorite Crowded House studio track that was cut for, but left off of their first four albums, just besting "Recurring Dream" and "I Am In Love" (although there's another, later one that I love even more than any of these). It was first released as the b-side of "Chocolate Cake", the album's first single, which makes me think that it may have been the last track cut from the Woodface album prior to release. The same version later appeared on Afterglow.

I love the melody, arrangement, and the lyrics here, which provide several lovely images. Although I rate this song higher than a few of the songs on Woodface, I'm still not sure that I would have wanted to replace any of those tracks with this one. I think "Fame Is" works perfectly well where it sits on the album and don't know if "Anyone Can Tell", which I think is a better song, would be as effective in that slot. Perhaps "Tall Trees" could be replaced by "Anyone Can Tell", but I also love that song where it occurs in the album tracklist and probably wouldn't change it. They just had too much strong material at the time. I suppose it could have been slotted in as an extra track to break up the slower group on the album's back half, but that would have made the album 15 songs long (not that I would have complained).

5/5

 

At least one released live recording exists, on the fan club CD In The Raw, recorded at the Back Alley, Houston on December 12, 1991.

 

Anyone Can Tell was my favorite track on the Chocolate Cake CD single that predated Woodface, it's another of Neil kitchen songs, and it's still a special song for me.

I like the little window it may be giving us into his soul. The issues the persona is dealing with in the song, whether real or just as a piece of songwriting, are evocative to say the least. Anyone Can Tell has something inexplainably magical to me. 4.8/5

 

I first heard "Anyone Can Tell" as one of the bonus tracks on the "Chocolate Cake" CD single (the other bonus track was "As Sure As I Am"), a couple of weeks before Woodface was released. It was really exciting that a track of this quality had been relegated to non-album status as it made me think that the album must be fabulous - and it is.
"Anyone Can Tell" is a high quality non-album track with a great melody, superb playing by all musicians and committed singing by Neil. The lyrics are a bit surprising, it is almost like a Christian pop song, with references to "the Lord in the kitchen", "there is another world waiting" and "in spite of what you have done / one day you will have the wisdom", contrasting to the actual world where "the criminals sing" and the truth isn't always a valuable thing. Neil's lyrics often display his ambivalence to religious beliefs and this is one of few songs where the message in that regard comes across as embracing religion.
I think the song's outro goes on a bit long, as if neither Neil nor the band really knew how to end the song and to me it loses its momentum by that.

Even though I think this is a vastly superior song to "Fame Is", I can see why that song made it to the album and this one didn't. I don't think "Anyone Can Tell" competed with any Finn Brothers song for a place, but possibly with "As Sure As I Am" and that song is stronger. The band and/or Capitol possibly felt they had enough mid-tempo songs as it was and needed a fast-paced rocker such as "Fame Is".

To me, this is a high quality bonus track but I don't feel it would have fitted all that well on Woodface.

3,8/5.

 

Love Anyone Can Tell , first heard it on the Chocolate Cake CD single and agree with what Stefan said I was stunned as well that a song of such high quality was a bonus track .

As for finding a place on Woodface for it on the original album 1st submitted to Capitol it would have fitted right in , but with a merged Finn Bros album it was obviously deemed not strong enough or too mid tempo.
I suppose an argument could be made to either ditch Tall Tress or Fame is to make way for it but to me as long as it was released that is all that matters .

re the live version on the fan club CD it was an audience request and so it was non rehearsed and as such it is a bit messy in some places but it is a serious attempt and the band play pretty much the entire song .
I don’t think it was attempted again .

Anyone Can Tell 4.5/5 for me
Awesome Tune

 

This is probably the best of the proto-“Woodface” tracks that didn’t make the album. Excellent guitar work, a committed vocal by Neil, interesting melodic shifts (althoug I think one chord change maybe tries too hard). This is an extremely listenable track, but the consensus above seems to be that stylistically it wouldn’t fit on ”Woodface,” and I agree.

Yet another song that finds me desperately wishing that I could write a song half as good as one of Neil’s rejects.

4/5

 

I enjoy Anyone Can Tell and I'd certainly place it above three of the tracks on Woodface, but it's nothing special. It's kind of CH-by-numbers, which is to say that it's miles better than most other acts' material but not really CH at their best.
3/5.

 

Sacred Cow & Anyone Can Tell are both good songs but clearly not up to the level of any of the Woodface tracks, IMO. I think it was the right decision to leave these as b-sides or out takes.
I'd give both of them 3/5

 

I'm in the minority but I would have retained "Anyone Can Tell" as I feel it is better than some of the songs on Woodface, and I have no qualms about it fitting in because, to me, Woodface sounds like a Greatest Hits album anyway rather than a flowing body of work like Temple Of Low Men or Together Alone.

4/5

I seem to go against the trend regarding Neil's original Woodface and the Finn Brothers songs in that I would rather have ended up with most of Neil's originals plus only a few Finn Brothers songs to satisfy Capitol's criticism of no obvious up tempo catchy singles, so I would have only added "Weather With You", "It's Only Natural" and "There Goes God" (3 songs instead of 7) because "All I Ask" sounds like a Tim solo song shoehorned in, "How Will You Go" is mid-tempo (like many of Neil's that were rejected), "Tall Trees" is mediocre and "Chocolate Cake" is a badly judged joke gone wrong.

 

Sorry for backtracking again for only a tiny bit of information...

On “Four Seasons in One Day” all keyboard parts are by Mitchell Froom except a minimoog part which was played by Mark Hart.

Carry on...

 

I have a feeling I might be able to guess which later B-side you like more than Anyone Can Tell.

 

Anyone Can Tell is a very very good b-side, but not developed fully in melodic sense and stylistically closer to TOLM than Woodface.

3,7 / 5

 

I'm not telling! (yet)

 

Just so no one gets surprised when I rate a bunch of b-sides higher than everyone else, I actually think Afterglow might be one of my favorite Crowded House albums. It could be that it just came along at the right time - I was available to listen to it a lot, some of the tunes resonated with what was going on with me, and it was at a time when the world had been starved of Finn output for quite some time.

I never got that from this one. I always heard that as someone dreaming of an idyllic family life. A place that's overrun by children, and the Lord (mom) is in the kitchen. Just a wife and kids, and it's clear that the Mrs. is in charge. Certainly there's issues in a 2019 context with that interpretation, but 30ish years ago in a song written by a baby boomer, there's nothing incendiary about it.

Anyway, I really like this song a lot - the music hits me just right, and Neil sings the hell out of it (to my ears).

5/5, but a low 5 relative to some that are coming...

 

"Anyone Can Tell" is a solid song but doesn't bowl me over. 3.5/5

 

Anyone Can Tell

To me, this is the kind of song that great writers can toss off. Of course it's quality but not all that inspired, to my ears.

3.75/5

 

Our votes for "Anyone Can Tell"

1-0
2-0
3-2
4-7
5-5
Average: 3.9808

 

Today's song is "Left Hand", written by Neil Finn and produced by Crowded House. According to the original liner notes, this non-Finn Brothers recording was recorded at Tim's Pericope Studios with Paul Kosky engineering in 1990. (Is that right?)

Spotify: Left Hand

According to Chris Bourke's book, this was part of the original proto-Woodface album, which is why the recording data (Periscope Studios, Paul Kosky) confuses me. Was there another, earlier version offered to Capitol? If so, was that the "Creek Song/Left Hand" version we've already discussed, or yet another permutation?

This version of the song was originally released on the Recurring Dream bonus live album in 1996, recorded 18 October 1991 in Ghent, Belgium, with Tim still in the band. Can't find a YouTube link, sadly.

The studio version was later released on Afterglow in 1999.

"Left Hand" contains elements from three songs previously discussed ranging from 1985 to 1990:

1. Left Hand [Mullanes Version] (Stranger than Fiction, Larger Than Life: the Finn Brothers song-by-song discussion thread )
2. Creek Song-Left Hand (Stranger than Fiction, Larger Than Life: the Finn Brothers song-by-song discussion thread )
3. Fall at Your Feet [rehearsal], disccused with "Fall At Your Feet"(Stranger than Fiction, Larger Than Life: the Finn Brothers song-by-song discussion thread )

The chorus may have roots in Split Enz. There is a bootleg that circulates of a 1993 Split Enz live recording in which yet another different version of the song is played. The sound of the bootleg is abysmal and all that can really be discerned with certainty is the chorus, which has Tim's high harmony vocal, as the Recurring Dream vocal has.

 

Here is a live version from November 1990.

 

Neil recorded a 4-track home demo of the "Left Hand" chorus in about 1983/4.

 

I think "Left Hand"[The Final Battle]" is the most powerful of all the versons, musically. (Though, my favorite version lyrically is the Mullanes version.)

The verse here is another one of those slightly confrontational lyrics that Neil was writing in the early 1990s, angry, like mid-sixties Dylan or late seventies Elvis Costello. With all the drama in the band, you can't help but wonder if the bile (in the verse, obviously the chorus was 6-7 years old by this point) is directed at a band-mate, but who knows?

No matter. I think it's a fine and rocking song; and it has an uncharacteristically sharp, rocking edge for a Crowded House studio song (maybe because Mitchell Froom wasn't producing.)

I really like the wah-wah guitar, the drums and especially, Nick's awesome bass. The pounding piano supports the song and adds a certain rhythm & blues undercurrent.

Crowded House sounded like this live so often but rarely on record.

I give it a 4.6/5. Along with "I Love You Dawn", it's my favorite of the outtakes (no, really.)