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

"Alt played everything though Brian played drums" -- Brian being of course, (Brian) Timothy Finn.

I seem to remember there also being photos of the studio, which are the only pictures of Periscope Studios I've ever seen.

I like the album (though, --sigh-- it's too long) and I like the live versions of the song even more (the ones on the album, not necessarily the YouTube performances

 

Sorry guys, this thread has gotten away from me. I don’t have ALT anyway.

My sister is gravely ill in Hospital so I may take some time out.

Lee

 

Here's wishing your sister gets well soon.

 

Oh, no. Good health to you and your family.

 

Oh wow. Best wishes to you all.

 

Seconded.

 

I picked this album up way back when it came out, and promptly forgot about it. It just never grabbed me in any way at all. I'm coming back to it for the first time in possibly 20 years for this.

"We Are Men" is not a strong outing... it's not horrible, but it's not good either. It just sort of sits like a matzah ball suspended in the middle of the broth somehow, neither floating or sinking.

2.5/5

 

You'd think between three accomplished songwriters they could have come up with something more gripping than D to G. And those lyrics are pretty lame, too. 2/5

 

I've always preferred Neil to Tim, and so there are pockets of Tim's career that I've never explored. ALT is one of those--I've always been a bit curious, but never sufficiently so to be moved to action. Nevertheless, ALT always had a certain mystique in my mind. Well, that balloon has been pictured. "We're All Men" is boring, plane and simple. The main melody just kind of sits there--it's the kind of melody that, were I to write it, I would dismiss as too uninteresting (I've dismissed a lot, which is one reason why I've finished so few songs; the other is that I'm a terrible lyricist). The lead vocal is mediocre and makes me long for Tim, except that when Tim finally comes in, it's clear that his voice has fully entered its problematic phase, one that would significantly complicate his work over the next few years and that he never fully recovered from. The harmonies here just do not gel at all. I understand that Tim at this point was entering a no-studio-polish phase, and given this preceding projects I can kind of understand the desire for a change of pace. But I don't think that the production style does him (or A, or L) any favors here.

I'm not going to write off ALT on the basis of one song. But I'm not feeling terribly optimistic.

2/5

 

I'll pray for her. Be strong, mate. All will be well.

 

Dammit - I've been there with siblings.

All the best to the both of you.

 

So very sorry to hear this. All my best thoughts to you, your sister, and your family.

 

Best wishes to you and your family, Lee.

 

Today's song is "Penelope Tree", written by Tim Finn, Andy White and Liam O'Maonlai. Lead vocals seem to be shared by all three, with Tim and Andy White taking the high and low parts of the harmony and Liam O'Maonlai filling in the middle part.

A version of the song was also released on the Bootleg live album in 1995 (apparently it was sold only at their concerts and through Andy White's website.)

Below is a live version from the same 1995 German festival that the live clip above came from.

 

This song sounds much more like a Tim Finn song than the last one, and with different production it might have fit in pretty well on True Colours: There's an quirky artiness about the song that reminds me of the younger 1979-1980 Tim that wrote "I Wouldn't Dream Of It"and "Shark Attack."

The lyric is humorous: there's a certain "sensitive male" theme in common with the last one, but the upbeat irreverent nature of this song works in a very different way from the more serious-sounding, at least on the surface "We're All Men"-- this song is a lot more fun. I have to say that "There's a cold Siberian wind/blowin' across my town/Oh, the answer's where I've been/I have found." is one of my favorite set of lines on the entire album.

I'd probably give this song full or nearly full marks; as I think it's not only written well but the general shape of it here sounds inspired production-wise; but the fact is, like the last song, it just goes on for too long. I really think that if it faded out at around the 3.10 minute mark it would make it's whimsical point perfectly. But they stretch it out to nearly a full four minutes in a deliberately cutesy way that just doesn't quite work for me. I get it. They had set out to have fun and be as silly as possible on this album, to record their songs in as deliberately tossed-off fashion as possible but it doesn't always connect with the listener; on the other hand that is the point.

Now, in the live clip above, it oddly kind of does work for me, -- after all it's not a song easily faded out live and I'll bet the chorus was a lot of fun to play and sing on stage -- but on the studio version it doesn't work. It does sound like they are having a blast though.

4.0/5

Both the live version above and the Bootleg version feature Tim's drums much more prominently than the studio version.

 

Our votes for "We're All Men"(I changed my own vote to 3.5)

1-0
2-3
3-4
4-1
5-0
Average: 2.6625

 

I have given ALT many listens over the years, and regrettably have never been able to enjoy the album. I've gotten both the American and the British editions of the CD, I've even picked up a couple of Hothouse Flowers CDs in hopes of getting interested via the Liam O'Maonlai route ... and nothing.

The album sounds like they had great fun writing and recording it, but I just don't enjoy it. It disappoints me to be so ambivalent about it.

I won't rate We're All Men as I don't want Lance to have to do a recount.

Pen elope Tree 2/5, because while I don't hate it, nothing about it moves me.

 

Is there any difference?

 

"Penelope Tree" does sound like a late-70s/early 80s Split Enz toss-off, and I wonder if Tim had saved it in a drawer since those days. I can appreciate its quirkiness, and it does have more chords than the previous song, but it isn't really of its time. I can hear Clive Gregson singing it with Any Trouble; in fact it sounds a lot like them. 3/5 (that's for both the album and live versions)

 

By the way, Penelope Tree was a model who was famous in the sixties; and had had a relationship with Ricky Fataar, who was Tim's friend and collaborator.

Tim said on the Bootleg album that the song had nothing to do with Peneleope Tree, but was just a good way to get the song started.

 

Mild Rant Mode warning:

This sort of song is exactly why I'm always suspicious of well-known singers collaborating under a group name: you'd think they'd all get competitive and try to up each other's game to make a unique combination of truly-fantastic songs that leaves everyone's jaw on the floor.

Instead, they usually deliver this kind of thing: everyone decides to plays garage band. You get the sloppy harmonies, rudimentary instrumentation, basic chord progressions and that sense of going nowhere you can hear at any amateur battle of the bands type event.

Which is fair enough, if they want to aim low, but I just don't understand why it takes three unique voices to write perfectly-average songs. Why would you aim so low? Why would you not even try, given that you're expecting an audience to pay for it?

It's also fair enough if you want to do it casually and underproduce it, but, let's be blunt here: back in the day, buying this album as a new release would have cost me the same $30 as, judging by the release date, a bunch of *truly great* albums, where the bands involved were at the top of their game, to the degree the quality would even carry over to their B-Sides. It was a great time for great music - checking my records, I bought sixty-six albums that year.

This is how Allmusic describes this album:

Altitude represents the trio's drunken, post-pub jamming with the predictable result of an informal, at times sloppy, album filled with seemingly unfinished songs.

Which, if that is what they wanted to do, fair enough, but, well, couldn't they charge $10 for it, not $30? Or just release it through their fanclubs? Why charge the same price as bands who are actually trying? Bring your A game, or don't waste the audience's time.

 

Here is a recent (November 2019) interview with the real-life Penelope Tree, "1960's icon extraordinaire". She and Ricky Fataar have a daughter together. No mention of the ALT song though.
Penelope Tree—1960's Icon Extraordinaire—Reflects on Life In and Out of the Spotlight

 

Sorry, is that Australian dollars? CDs are/were that expensive there?

 

Altitude is a bit frustrating becasue I do think there's an excellent five-star or at least 4 star album buried in it; but the self-indulgent nature keeps it from being reached. (Though there are a few songs on the album that I really, really love, but I will probably be the one of the few who does.)

Not only are there too many songs on the album (I think that a ten song album definitely would have sufficed) but many of them, at least three, overstay their welcome and some seem almost deliberately botched. There's not a single song on the album that I don't think has good ideas, though, they just aren't done well, necessarily.

That's the point of the whole project, but there's something insular about the art-for-art's sake that bugs me.

But I'll make a slight case for it.

I've said before that I strongly believe Tim didn't start getting really good as a solo artist until Say It Is So; not everyone agrees, but many do; and I regard Altitude as a sort of middle-point of his career when he very consciously dove into self-indulgence in an attempt to purge the commercial ambitions that he had been desperately trying to achieve, to disappointing results.. IN many ways, I think the album is the anti-Big Canoe, and about as enjoyable

I really think that not only did he need to record this album; but he needed to release it; it seems partly self-released. He had to really tear down all chances of a commercial career in order to re-centre himself. It's a reboot, I think, and I think it worked. It's kind of Tim's Self Portrait (the Dylan album.)

As for Liam and Andy, well, I think it means something different for them. For them it's just a lark that they recorded on their Australian holiday with their older Kiwi drinking buddy.

 

This reminds me of a quote I once read in an article about the brilliant group Sparks. A reviewer at the time had called their 1975 album Indiscreet (produced by Tony Visconti) "self-indulgent". Sparks' singer Russell Mael was asked to comment about this. His reply was: "We, as artists, indulge ourselves. Thank you for noticing."