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

Most Unwanted is a very curious beast. I really hoped it would appear on the deluxe set because the versions I've heard have always been poor quality dubs from a broadcast. Which is a shame, because I think the song and performance are remarkable. It's phenomenal. I know you're not scoring but a full 5/5 for this.

 

So many comments about I am in Love to disagree with

Firstly, though: I love this song. Or, more accurately, the performance. Because, contrary to others, I think the lyrics are unfinished and awkward, and I think that's why it lost a place on the album. But the playing. Oh, wow. From that thundering bass that opens the track, this is one of Nick's finest moments. I can't speak about how difficult (or not) his lines are in this but they are the absolute focal point of this song.

The sounds that swirl around his pulsating opening conjure a real sense of foreboding and this builds as, first, the guitar and then Neil's voice enter the fray. This all builds until we reach the chorus where Hessie's kit explodes on the word "am", giving it extra emphasis. I love this chorus.

Things settle down again for the second verse, but the build works just as well second time around. God, I love Nick and Hessie's playing on this. Moves me every time.

The end of the second chorus still brings the shivers. And the middle eight is still one of the most evocative things I've heard. Perhaps those lyrics cut too close to the truth sometimes...

And again, the song has a coda that Hessie introduces with perfect timing. I love love love Nick's bass work on this coda. They could have made a whole track around this coda.

5/5.

Secondly, oh yes this does fit on the album: right after Private Universe. It creates a far better link between that song and Distant Sun to my ears. And that's where it lives on my playlist

This playlist was pretty much perfect for me until the release of the studio version of Convent Girls. And then it all got messy.

 

"I am in Love" is a great arrangement/performance of a decent song. I like the way it builds. The bass lines and the log-drum-inspired tom-tom work elevate it from the straight-ahead rocker it might have become. I can imagine it on Together Alone, but it would not be a favorite for me. 3.7/5

 

The driving bass and percussion at the start make this a good opener for Afterglow and introduce a track that really showcases the Crowded House rhythm section at their best. Paul absolutely shines here. Add to that an impeccable arrangement of guitar (alternately jangly and piercing) and cool synth, and this should be a showstopper.

But the actual song is somewhat lacking. The lyrics and melody are a relatively dull and repetitive for me and it’s hard for the wonderful packaging to really dress that up.

As for the lyric, I will say it’s fun to guess whose parents Neil is teasing with the second verse. It could go either way!

3.5/5

 

I actually like the mother/father lines: a mild rejection of the whole Freud narrative, which in many ways is maybe the opposite of romance.

 

I absolutely love this song. I always thought it was delightful that it's weakness, in the mind of it's author, was that it actually made perfect sense. The mother/father lines blew me away the first time I heard this tune when I hungrily snapped up "Afterglow" - certainly I wouldn't want to end up with someone like my mom! Too much information? Agree with Paul H on the playing - the drums in particular on this one captivated me form the get-go. Disagree on the lyrics being unfinished - I think they are 100% done, he's saying exactly what he wants to say without any evasive language or obfuscation, and *that* becomes the problem. For me it just makes it even more exceptional - it stands out as a crystal clear narrative with no need for interpretation or assumption that's incredibly passionate, powerful, and well done.

5/5

 

I agree with Paul H that the section from the end of the second chorus through the bridge is prime Neil, but the rest of the lyric is mundane and relatively uninspired by his standards, and it really doesn’t have much of a hook. One of Neil’s weaker ones, I reckon, almost but not quite saved the great musicians in the band, who were really firing on all cylinders at that time.
2/5

 

I am in Love.

Yes, must say I do like this one.

The rolling bass and the pounding drums make for a brilliant intro and the rest is just as good as has already been said.

I'm not sure if I would put it on TA but that doesn't matter, we have the song and that's good enough.

4/5

 

Do you remember a toy called a Whirly Tube? It's a corrugated plastic tube about 30" long that makes sound if you whirl it around in the air. Whirling faster produces higher pitches. I'm almost sure I've heard that sound in more than one Split Enz (and perhaps CH) song. The beginning of "I am in Love" reminds me of it again. Any of you insiders know whether these were used for recordings?

 

I think I know you mean. I thought that was just was a squeaky drum pedal.

 

I love I Am in Love!

I like this one more than most of the more rocking songs on Together Alone. I love the drums right up in your face, the pounding bass, the chiming electric guitar. I like the lyrics a lot. Very straightforward, which isn’t Neil’s typical style, but so what, it works. He’s in love, I get it. *laughs* Sometimes you just want to shout that out! And the soaring melody in the chorus perfectly reflects that feeling.

I like the marry your father/marry your mother lines too. This is certainly not the only place I have heard that idea.

It’s not really right thematically for the Together Alone album, but I think it fits in fine musically.

4.5/5

 

I said earlier I would have included "I Am In Love" on Together Alone in place of "Black & White Boy" and I'm glad Neil agrees with me (I didn't know his opinion when I said it, honestly). Unlike some of the other outtakes this sound like a fully-fledged song and also the production makes it feel like a Together Alone song. The demos, however, I don't like much at all. The home demo is just dull and the band demo sounds too peppy - like they're playing at a school disco.

4/5

 

"I Am In Love" is a high quality track, with its pounding drums and bass blended with the grunge-ish guitars and in one way it's amazing that a song of this quality was relegated to bonus track status. I don't think this song or "You Can Touch" competed with "Skin Feeling" for a place on the album - I think there was always going to be one Paul song on the album.
I like this song very much but it has a couple of minuses in my opinion. When Neil sings the title he sounds weary and resignated rather than elated. I know that he often likes to mix happy lyrics with more melancholy music (and vice versa) and it can be effective and enhance a song, but here it just sounds odd to my ears.
I've always found the mother/father references disturbing and uncharacteristically disrespectful towards the parents/in-laws and a bit cliched too.

That aside, it's a very good song but as I think the tracklisting for the album is perfect the way it is I agree with the decision to leave it off the album. This one is fine as a stand-alone track and fits much better on "Afterglow".
4/5

 

I Am in Love is pretty good and sounds more developed than most of the non-album songs that the band recorded.

The lyrics sounds a little half-baked though, so 3.5/5.

 

It's very clearly audible at the beginning of "The Choral Sea".

 

Okay, I don't do this for many of the songs, but I had to do it for this one!
This was an incredible drain on my intellectual energy because it's so open for interpretation.

Called out to prove my love, You reply by getting defensive
Called out to prove my love, Now you should be able to sense it

The singer is called out to prove his love, and feels that the object of the song should be able to sense this

I'm full of your dreams, I let you sleep with the lights on
Stay with me might as well, Be the kind of girl you want to be

He lets her do as she will, she is free to be the kind of girl she wants to be

I am in love, I am in love
I am a fool, Fell from above

The singer is in love, so much so that he feels a fool of himself (but in a good way)

These things that I have done, They would be a test of anyone

He's done a bunch of stuff for this girl.

How am I meant to see
You dressed up like your mother

It's weird when he sees her resembling her mom, because that's awkward.

They say you marry your father
I hope that don't reflect on me

He hopes she doesn't have daddy issues.

They say you marry your mother
I hope that don't put you in her company

He hopes that, for his part, he's not dealing with an Oedipal complex.

I am in love, I am in love
And I am a fool, There is no other

He is reiterating that he is in love, specifically with this person.

What I say is don't lie
But it's enough to make you wonder
I can't be one that you want to trust
And not the one that you want to trample
In the dust

It would be good if this relationship is sincere and not one where he gets "trampled into dust," so to speak.

I am in love
I am in love
And I am a fool
There is no other
I am in love
I am in love

He continues to be in love...

Into the fire

It's intense.

Tears start coming

It's still intense.

Good stars surround us

Seems like it's going ok.

It's enough to want to make you wonder

But yeah, it'd be cool if it works out.

 

A good example of this is Neil's Split Enz song, Message To My Girl. To me it's one of the greatest songs ever written - and I'm sure someone will, one day, have a worldwide smash hit with it. But the arrangement, especially Eddie's synths, takes away so much from the song.

 

"I Am In Love" is a brilliant song that is better than so much of what made it on to Together Alone. It was first released as a non-LP b-side on the 1993 UK "Nails in My Feet" single, and then again the following year as a b-side on the "Private Universe" single in AUS/NZ. Most of us probably first encountered it as the leadoff track on the 1999 Afterglow compilation, where it works extremely well to launch what is inevitably a somewhat uneven collection of discarded songs. This is one of my favorites from the Together Alone sessions, and if it doesn't quite have the lyrical mystery that songs like "Kare Kare", "Catherine Wheels", and "Private Universe" possess, it shares a certain atmosphere with those tunes. The pounding drums (like the crashing surf) start it out, then we hear some weirdly modulated organ, before Neil's grungy guitar fills arrive. I love the way his lead vocal is a bit buried in the sound, which is dominated by Paul's pounding drums. This is a song where I find the verses even stronger than the chorus, particularly when the power chords come in after the first chorus (power chords are a rarity in Neil's music, but they really work here). The drum sound here doesn't really share the same murkiness that plagues the more rocking tracks on Together Alone. Some of it is there, but this sounds a bit closer to the Froom sound than most of the rest of what came out of the Karekare sessions. Still, the brooding atmosphere that envelops most of the album is also present on this track. The only part of the song I could do without is the mostly instrumental coda that comes after the false ending; I almost feel that the song would be stronger if it had just ended there. This is one of a relatively small number of Neil's love song lyrics that I can relate to and connect to my own life. It's just a great song. I would have placed it on the album right between "Private Universe" and "Walking on the Spot", bumping off "Black & White Boy".

The home demo of the track, dating from 1991, was released as a bonus cut on the Deluxe Edition reissue of Afterglow in 2016. It's quite appealing already even in this embryonic state. Of course, it is missing the power and majesty that the band would eventually bring to it. A later band demo from 1992 was released as a bonus track on the Together Alone Deluxe Edition reissue and it is certainly better than the home demo, but still falls far short of having the soaring anthemic splendor of the version recorded in Karekare during the album sessions.

4.8/5 for the b-side/Afterglow final version
3.4 for the band demo
3.2 for the home demo

 

Our votes for "I Am In Love"

1-0
2-1
3-1
4-6
5-6
Average: 4.0357

 

Today's song is "You Can Touch", written by Neil Finn; produced by Youth and Crowded House.

Spotify: You Can Touch

"You Can Touch" was released as another B-side to the UK double CD Nails In My Feet, and again on the Afterglow compilation in 1999.

I think the song may have been written at Kare Kare.

ON the interview disc that came with the initial US pressing of Afterglow, Neil said that Paul did not play on this track having left the studio at Karekare in a huff. Neil himself played the drums, laying down 8 tracks of drums. When it came time to mix, Bob Clearmountain informed Neil that he "couldn't mix your drums." It's not clear who mixed "You Can Touch" as there is no mix engineer noted in the liner notes for this particular song.

A live version was released on the fan club album Manchester Split (with Neil's piano pounding out chords instead of rhythm guitar), recorded on November 21st, 1993.

Note: Today marks the 365th day of this thread which started on January 21st 2019. The thread's birthday will be tomorrow. It's also my birthday today.

 

Well, the drums are a bit of a mess, aren't they? But somehow that adds to the song in my opinion.

I love this song: the grungy feel of it, the hazy drums, the busy bassline operating almost independently to the rest of the track and the Kare Kare atmospherics.

I've always wondered if the song was written by Neil after his bout of giardia in Karekare which saw him lose an alarming amount of weight in a short time. At the time they didn't know what was affecting him and he blamed "German backpackers"for it. (Oh, those evil evil evil German backpackers.) It must have put a halt to recording.

My condition is hard to define
I'm thin and pale and I need to unwind

The song is an interesting one: it seems to be narrated by a very ill man, perhaps a helpsless dying man to his nurse; and hes inviting her to "touch him". There's obviously an interesting, almost ironic sexual thing going on there but when he says "You can touch me/I won't hide/You can touch me/ I won't die" there's a subtle religious thing, as if he's one of the sick in the Bible that Jesus healed.

So there's this rather explicit Christ/sex thing going on, the sacred and the sexual, as we've noted is a thing in Neil's work at this time. But it seems a bit more explicit here, and is maybe my favorite example of this kind of thing.

The lyric in my opinion fits the backing track well: the distorted rhythm guitar and the bluesy lead, sound kind of sick: and the picked twelve-string or acoustic guitar or mandolin or bazouki or whatever it is that's going on beneath the guitars, not to mention the loud and rocking but very murky and imprecise drumming: it all lends to this atmosphere of disease.
The song itself sounds ill.

I note that in the lone live version I have, Paul plays drums, and plays them very well, but the studio version is the one that really does it for me.

Like the last song, I'm not sure if the song fits on the album. It certainly feels like a Together Alone track to me. To be honest, part of me feel sthat all of the outtakes on this album are great (unlike some of the outtakes on Woodface) and I wish they had done one sprawling double album sometimes. Although I doubt Capitol would have let them do so.

I end up putting it on my "last Crowded House" playlist, with the 95-96 songs.

5/5

 

Happy birthday, Lance and happy anniversary to this wondrous thread! It's impossible to convey how much insight I've gained first reading, then participating in it. All these non-CD tracks are new to me. Thank you, Lance.

 

"You Can Touch" was also the Japanese bonus track on the Together Alone CD in that country.

Happy birthday, Lance!

 

Interesting. I'm sure I can look it up, but what was the track number of it? Or was it just lazily added as track 14?

 

Happy birthday, Lance!