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

You are right.

 

I agree. The chorus is perfectly deadened and somber, grey, in a way that fits the subject.

 

I'm so going to frame this and show it to people, just to prove it CAN happen from time to time.

 

Not much to add to what others have said. "Where is My Soul" is another solid, enjoyable track. 4/5

 

See my comments on Bowie's 'Hours'. Why spend a lot of money to put on the affectation of a lo-fi sound? Their traditional audience, who is used to the polished production, will be alienated - 'Finn' didn't even get a Gold Accreditation in Australia (which only requires 35,000 sales) - and those who favour a genuine lo-fi indie aesthetic would see it as fake bandwagon jumping by very wealthy, privileged major label musicians affecting 'hipness'. Remember when Bryan Adams came back in the 90's with grunge affectations? I cringed.

I remember writing to Martin Newell of lo-fi legends 'The Cleaners from Venus' back in the 80's. He was kind enough to draw me fingering charts of some of his guitar chords: "I don't know what this chord is, but it sounds great!" I couldn't imagine the Finn's doing that. Even when Martin finally went into a real studio - (86's 'Going to England') - it was a very cheap one. It sounds authentic. 'Finn' sounds like the Brothers... how would I put it in 1995 terms... studied sculpture at St Martin's College. I suppose I can't single them out in an era where every middle class kid was affecting Class Tourism ('Parklife'!) , but, once again, in 1995 terms, 'Reader Meet Author'.

I listened to 'Try Whistling This' after 'Finn'. It's an incredibly-expensive sounding production with a currently-hot producer done in multiple studios, once again affecting what was very 'trendy' that year. If anything was learned from 'Finn' it seemed it was just as readily-abandoned.

 

I love "Where is my Soul." Classic Neil, and the slightly out-of-tune saloon piano (which sounds like it could have been played by Eddie Rayner) makes for a cool atmosphere. 4.5/5

 

@Lance. I wholeheartedly agree with all your comments about “Where Is My Soul”. You literally took the words out of my mouth!

@brownie61. My favorite bit is also Tim speaking the title!

Classic. 5/5.

 

Our votes for "Where Is My Soul"

1-0
2-1
3-2
4-6
5-5
Average: 4.0533
(edited for @iarla )

 

Today's song is "Bullets In My Hairdo", written by Neil Finn & Tim Finn.

Tim Finn said in a promo interview that it almost did not make the album due to the subject matter and the fact that it's quirkiness made it "slightly irritating."

It was inspired by a conversation Tim had with a "camp, slightly annoying" hairdresser/make up artist in New York City who had read about a woman in Sarajevo who was afraid to go shopping due to living in a war zone; the phrase "bullets in my hairdo" came from the hairdresser.

 

Where Is My Soul.

Ouch, my f***ing heart. Perfect. On some days, it's my favourite thing either Finn brother has ever recorded.

Rating songs doesn't appeal to me (Sorry Lance!) but I'll give this one a very enthusiastic 5/5.

When Q Magazine reviewed this album in 1995, there was a line in the review along the lines of "Oh! Is that someone shaking pebbles in a sock?" - I suspect it was Where Is My Soul they were referring to.

Other comments from me when the album wrap-up post for FINN goes up. Such a dear, weird treat of a record. Pete Paphides has apparently been working on a vinyl release for his Needle Mythology label. Bring it on

 

Bullets in My Hairdo is so weird, silly, and quirky that it's infectious. "The tanks are rolling over my hundred dollar shoes" is a line that, for some reason, always struck a chord with me... just the way it lands in the song and juxtaposes the imminent danger with the mundane. A neat little bucket of angst that's always fun to listen to.

4/5

 

Reading over some thoughts about this song over on frenz.com, I have come to realize Tim was right: people do find it "slightly irritating." Maybe that's why I like it. And always have, after the first few listens.

First, I like the lyric and the very odd melody...This song has always put me in the mind of a odd nightmare: something that should be scary but just odd, one of those dreams where you are just watching things in such a detached way. The idea of it being about this quite shallow fashion hound living in a war zone and worrying about his hair and his hundred dollar shoes strikes me as darkly comic and the song has a weird sort of shallow depth to it.

I also like the sound -- this is the weirdest sounding track on the record to me: the chamberlain hook, the chugging rhythm guitar and the very, very childish drums all sound odd to me, and the backing vocals in particular themselves sound like they are being sung by fey, campy ghosts.

The song is an odd and haunting one and I like it. I think it's a cool track. ,

4.2/5

 

You don't have to rate songs on this thread, personally, I think we are more interested in what you think than the number.

 

Well, I think it was just kind of cool at the time, simple as. It's what Tchad Blake did. It was a fresh sound. Slick pop/rock was kind of uncool and out, at least in my world.

They were musicians, they didn't really listen to the pop charts, they listened to world music and arty projects like the Latin Playboys. Suddenly they felt that that kind of music was becoming cool and they were excited about it.

I'm not sure they spent that much money: they don't have to pay themselves, after all. Tchad Blake was probably not that expensive. Neil put the money up for the recording himself. I genuinely think it was a labor of love for both of them.

This is probably true. But a couple of things to consider: a)I'm not sure how heavily they promoted it anyway. They promoted it enough, I suppose that I heard about it, and they made videos. My understanding is that the success in the UK took them by surprise, though. I think the plan was simply to make enough to break even, how bad could it be?

b) maybe alienating their audience is what they wanted to some extent. Or maybe they just didn't care. It wouldn't be the first alienating move they had made: see "Chocolate Cake". Neil was ambitious but I think Tim was torn between ambition and just wanting to live a free life and both of them wanted enough money to be free to create. But even as ambitious as Neil was, Nick has said that neither Neil nor Paul were interested in becoming "the biggest band in the world." Success was not his prime motivator. He had his core audience.

c) Maybe making an album that really excited them, a folksy home-made album that was interesting yet not slick and had little-to-no record company oversight was what they needed. Maybe Neil looked at the freedom Tim had had with Altitude with envy ; maybe Crowded House felt like a chain around Neil's neck and was stifling him creatively.

Really, when you think about it, I'd say their entire career has been quirky and left of centre. Only the Crowded House albums, particularly the first, third, fourth and fifth (Time on Earth) go for a mainstream pop/rock sound in my opinion. Maybe Tim's first four albums and Everyone is here. 9 or ten albums in a thirty-five album (or so) career.

To me, Try Whistling This is somewhat correlative to Before and After. Multiple producers, multiple styles. But it hangs together better.

But I think personally that it shares a certain aesthetic with Finn though. Not the same sort of home-spun pop art. Maybe I'm looking at it in strictly American 90a cultural terms: maybe the American market back then was more strictly divided than other markets so I see it as being really commercial within the niche it was going for and definitely part of the same world with Finn, albeit much more ornate, I'll admit.

 

odd melody...odd nighmare...just odd...drums sound odd...time to buy a thesaurus.

 

"Bullets In My Hairdo" starts off sounding a bit quirky, showing promise but to me it quickly loses steam with a chorus that is only so-so. And the vocal performances by both brothers sound rather half-hearted.
All of the above could have been minor issues if the song had really good lyrics, but they are even worse.
Apparently inspired by an anecdote a hairdresser told Tim about a woman in Sarajevo, it seems the brothers then intended to write a satire about shallow people and consumerism. Satire isn't their forte in my opinion. When they write about their own experiences, feelings, fears, thoughts etc, or about persons they know well and care about, they are capable of writing the most incredible, but when they become too detached from the subject matter and write about persons they don't know at all, assuming how that person might think, they tend to just come across as patronising and lacking in empathy. In this particular case, I bet neither they nor the hairdresser have any own experiences of living in a war-zone. Tim and Neil might have visited some such area for a day as well-paid celebrities doing a bit of charity work for a few hours before moving on to the next MTV appearance, but the person in the anecdote lived in Sarajevo during the Bosnian-Serbian war on a day-to-day basis. A long-time friend of mine did as well, before she and her family fled here. I have heard a lot from here what it was like. Also, an ex gf of mine was (is) originally from Syria before her family fled from that country and her parents certainly did know very well too what it was like to live in a war-zone.
Having heard these stories, I don't believe for a second that the person in the anecdote thought like the narrator in the lyrics.
Also, it's such a cliche that a person who is interested in clothes is shallow (they might be, they might not be) while a person interested in music is a deep-thinker (they might be, they might not be).
In addition: "and this shopping is a curse" - but please buy our records, concert tickets and tour merchandise so that we can continue to record albums, travel around in first class around the world and continue to be well-paid musicians.
Decent enough music, awful lyrics.
1,7/5

 

See, I see it differently and I will have to disagree with you about the lyric, with genuine respect of course. .

Allow me to jump ahead to tomorrow.
If "Paradise (Wherever You Are)" is about someone (a "white person" they say in the promo interview) living in paradise yet feeling miserable, this is it's sort of nightmarish counterpart.

You see, "Paradise (Wherever You Are)" is about what we now call "First-world problems.""Bullets in My Hairdo", by contrast, is about real problems; narrated by a character that would not really exist in that situation: so I see it as just a bizarre dream. Or rather it's about the imaginary transplantation of "first world problems" to a war zone.

I dont see it as satirical; and it sure doesn't feel like it's meant to be a "report from the front."

When they say "shopping is a curse" they are not really telling us that: they are telling us a story from the point of view of a cartoonish character in a hypothetical situation situation. Tim is telling a war story from the shallow "campy, annoying" hairdresser's point of view: i.e., this is what Tim imagines the hairdresser imagines a war zone to be. Oh, it makes shopping such a problem!!! That's the only way she can process the idea of war.

I think that we've seen Tim in particular write about heavier subjects in Southern Cross -- ok, most of the songs were rated pretty badly on this thread, mainly due to the very dated production and the fact that the R&B/disco nature of the tracks doesn't gibe very well with posters here; but the lyrics are actually pretty good on that album and stand up with some of Tim's best -- "Dr. Fidel" and "Verde" in particular paints quite vivid pictures (the former of a war zone) with great depth in just a few words -- and if Tim were really writing about war per se here I think he is capable of painting a more realistic picture.

(I'm assuming this is a Tim dominated track, though Neil did these odd little songs too from time time to time - especially the bonus disc to Try Whistling This has some songs of this variety musically. I guess it's impossible to say.)

 

With all due respect to those who think Bullets in My Hairdo is in some way making light of a serious topic, I don’t see it that way.

Lyric inspirations come from almost anywhere, and often morph into something completely different from the source of their inspiration, (Nails in My Feet, anyone? ...among other random thoughts that Neil has built songs around. Detective is flat?)

Anyway, I think Bullets in My Hairdo is hilarious. It’s so silly and ridiculous that I just have to laugh at this surely fictional character who is so concerned about his or her hairdo, hundred dollar shoes, and how the situation has made shopping a curse. It makes me laugh every single time. I hear this as a made-up, exaggerated story. More like the retelling of a bizarre, somewhat scary dream by a person who is a good storyteller than a description by someone actually living in a war zone.

The music is quirky and fun too.

I like it.

3.5/5

 

I quite like Bullets in my Hairdo as the harmonies are really good as Tim is doing the high part .
For once on the record the quirky production suits the song completely for me as well .

I don’t think this ever performed live as I suppose re creating the sound of the record live without using tapes would have been problematic.

Bullets 3.8/5 for me

 

I like Bullets In My Hairdo. I like the beat, I like the melody, I like the poppy arrangement.

I especially like that Tim and Neil are talking about war and conflict. They certainly weren't aiming for the top of the charts (just take a look at what was selling in the US while they were recording: Top 100 Songs | Billboard Hot 100 Chart ). I'm grateful that at this point in their careers they were willing to go down that even darker alley and address the subject of real world suffering. It's too bad the song is sequenced so late in the album, but maybe they were intending to slip it into our consciousness after grabbing us with the first 8 songs. This isn't the first nor the last time Tim or Neil would address really serious issues, nor is it their best or their worst song about those issues.

4/5, because they can't all be full marks, and because there are times when I just couldn't bear to listen to this song. First World problem indeed.

 

Not a song that really stands up to repeated listening to me. Some of the lyrics are a little embarrassing (for example, the curse/worse couplet), the production and vocals are a tad annoying and the percussion just grates on me more and more as I re-listen to these songs each day.

2.5/5.

 

Bullets: I really don't like the whole atonal sound of the thing. Nor Tim's voice. Nails down a blackboard. 2/5.

 

I don’t find Bullets to be “slightly irritating.". It’s quirky, for sure. But so was the conversation that inspired the song. That conversation, and the title line that came from the hairdresser, would definitely inspire a song full of anxiety and dread. The production, and Tim’s wonderful harmony vocal, both do a great job of conveying those emotions in song.

4/5.

 

Bullets in My Hairdo is a somewhat strange, fun little number. I really like the bass on this one, not sure who is playing it though, maybe Neil?
4/5

 

To clarify my previous comments regarding the lyrics of "Bullets In My Hairdo"... I think it certainly would be possible for a writer to write about a shallow person only interested in shopping, despite living in a war-zone, whether such lyrics would be intended as satire or in a more serious way. For such lyrics to be good the writer would have to try and understand that person and what their motives and feelings are, to try and get into the mind of the character, so that you as a listener believe that the person really thinks that. In "Bullets In My Hairdo", when I hear it I don't believe for a second that the narrator means the words or that they think like this. And neither Tim nor Neil seem to believe that either, the song is sung so half-heartedly.
As a comparison, the Split Enz song "Charlie" has a narrator who wakes up to find he accidentally killed his wife when he was drunk. We know that Tim didn't kill anyone but he sings it with great conviction, making us listeners believe this could be a true story. Another example is "Into Temptation", inspired by Neil observing two groups of sports persons at a hotel, pairing off during the night and then imagining what happens. He really gets into the mind of his character and really succeded, to the level that many listeners have assumed it's his own actual experiences he's singing about. And to me, "Bullets In My Hairdo" totally lacks that - it really sounds to my ears that Tim was told an anecdote by a hairdresser who had read about a stranger in a faraway country.
Another example, to show the difference as I hear it: in 1966 there were at least two well-known songs about the high income tax in the U.K. One was The Beatles' "Taxman" (written by George Harrison), in which the narrator is the taxman himself, and the other is The Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" (written by Ray Davies), in which the narrator is an upper class man who can no longer sail his yacht due to having to pay so much income tax. Both songs are presumably intended as satire, but the difference to me is that Ray Davies really got into the mind of his character. As a listener I'm convinced that the character in that song truly believes he is having serious problems. In the Beatles song I don't believe that a real taxman would think like that, it just sounds like George Harrison himself being upset that he has to pay so much income tax. Yeah, it must be tough to be 23 years old and earning so much money that this becomes a problem.
However, I am glad others are appreciating the lyrics of "Bullets In My Hairdo" more than I do.