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

Smoko Duet is much better than the last instrumental. I can only wonder how good this would be if Tim added a vocal melody to some of these.
3/5

 

Thanks for this!

 

I like "Smoko Duet". Nice groove. 3.5/5

 

"Smoko Duet" is pleasant but relatively unmemorable. The funky break adds an interesting twist but isn't enough to make the song special.

2.9/5

 

This is fine, but super uninteresting. I feel bad scoring it because I'm scoring it as a song I'm hearing in a vacuum, in which case it's uninteresting indeed, but it might be really solid as the background music for whatever it's supposed to be accompanying.

2.5/5

 

Intriguing title for an instrumental. This is one of the better instrumentals on the album. There's a lot going on in the arrangement and it keeps taking unexpected twists. To me, it sounds like an instrumental outtake from "Mental Notes", but played by session musicians rather than early Enz members.
3/5

 

Yes, I think the instrumentals on this album are the closest thing has done in his career to Mental Notes.

 

Our votes for "Smoko Duet":
1-0
2-0
3-7
4-0
5-0
Average: 2.9857

 

Today's song is "Rock and Roll Girl" (also spelled "Rock 'N' Roll Girl".), written by Tim Finn and produced by Tim Finn and Peter Contini. Engineered and mixed by Peter Contini at Sun Studios, Brisbane.

It streams here and was also included on the album Rarities-Demos-Live Performances Volume 1.

• Joe Acaria: – drums
• Dario Bortolin: – bass guitar
• Greg Hitchcock: – guitar
• Laurence Maddy: – Hammond organ, trombone, guitar, sound effects

 

Tim seems to have gotten over his fascination with making sophisitcated pop during this period and gone instead for feeling -- maybe that's why I like his vocal songs so much from this period. There's always been a slight air of pretension about Tim's work, really from the early Split Enz days -- I think it's very much a part of his character, he puts himself squarely inside some sort of literary tradition. I mean, I don't dislike it, its just who he is, it's how he expresses himself.

Which is why I feel moving into musicals in general in the last decade was a good move for him (even if it frustrates his pop fans.)

This too was a musical: but like a couple of the other songs on this album , this really doesn't feel like a musical song at all -- it seems like a sweet and simple pop song completely from the heart; Tim's for once guile-less voice delivering the melody in such a way that the verse and the chorus stick with me all day long -- and not in an annoying way!

Of course there is a bit of old time late-fifties, early sixties doo-wop in this, but at the same time it feels like neither pastiche nor hasty toss-off. Even his hasty toss-offs of the period have a heartful charm ("Comet.")

I feel like Tim really means it; and I feel like he's having fun. The song sounds so...easy, as if the melody had fallen from the heavens. Good, sweet melodies are not all that special for Tim Finn-- melody is his great strength -- but hitherto he's had a tendency to overcook things; or there's was a certain fussiness in the vocal approach that keeps songs from connecting emotionally -- but here I feel that's not the case -- it does connect.

There is attention to detail (the drum pattern is pretty cool, as is the lead guitar) but it never feels overproduced. Just a band playing a song in the way it's meant to be played. In fact, judging from this and a few songs on "Before and After" Tim Finn is actually one of the better producers that Tim Finn has had.

There's nothing sad or depressing at all in the lyric; yet in its unambitious, easy-going way, "Rock and Roll Girl" is the kind of perfect pop/rock that brings tears to my eyes --
5/5

 

A pleasant tune, but Tim's voice is very thin and the lyrics are cliched.

2.5/5.

 

Rock And Roll Girl is a surprise. The repetitive guitar riff is nice, but instead of being used too much, it gives the song consistency. The lyrics seem clichéd, but aren't to my ears. The vocal is a bit understated, resulting in the voice not standing out on this album of so many instrumentals, There isn't any variation in the tempo throughout the whole song, but instead of being monotonous it's a nice break from all of the tempo changes found so far in the album. And let's not forget that this is a song in a musical, not just a pleasant little ditty on a pop record. It would be a real shift from some of the heavy boot dance numbers.

It's better than the sum of its parts, and a pretty impressive feat of resstrained yet intentional writing and production. By the end of the song, I always like it better than I expect to.
4/5

 

Damn, if I had known that Steel City had so many good songs on it I would have looked for it a long time ago. Rock N Roll Girl is another gem.
4.5/5...….but I suspect this one will be a 5/5 to me eventually.

 

I don't know if I'm just cranky or something the last few days, but the Steel City stuff just doesn't connect with me. Rock N' Roll girl sounds perfectly like "ending credits" music - it's nothing that anyone stayed for, but it isn't going to upset anyone who did stick around.

3/5

 

"Rock & Roll Girl" is a breezy, pleasant pop song. The intro reminds me a little of David Bowie's "China Girl". The gently jangling electric guitars that run underneath the main melody add depth and appeal to the song for me. The more I hear this one, the more I like it.

3.6/5

 

Pleasant, yes, but nothing special. The middle eight seems strangely abridged, as if he lost interest in it. And Tim's voice hardly sounds like him. 3/5

 

Hm. His voice sounds great on this album, I think. He would not have been able to sing this song well at all ten years prior, in my opinion.

His voice changed, in the mid-90s and it’s here where he showed he had learnt to sing within the boundaries of its new limitations. I can’t agree that it doesn’t sound like him; it just sounds like older him.

 

"Rock and Roll Girl" is another gem on this album and one that works very well as a stand-alone song. It has a breezy summer feel to it and is irresistably catchy. An uplifting song that could have been just fluff but thanks to Tim's heartfelt entusiasm and commitment it avoids that trap. This one would have fit in well on the "Say It Is So" album.
In the liner notes for the fan club-released "Rarities / Demos / Live Performances Vol. 1" Tim writes that this song is dedicated to his daughter Elliot "who at 5 can hold down a beat and sing up a storm". I like that he dedicated it to his then 5-year-old daughter, though when the "Steel City" album was recorded she wasn't even born yet...
4,4/5

 

By the way - how does Neil pronounce his middle name? Is it "Mull-LANE" or "MULL-in"?

 

It’s the former.

 

Our votes for "Rock and Roll Girl:

1-0
2-0
3-3
4-3
5-2
Average: 3.75

 

Today's song is another hard rock instrumental, "Absail", written and produced by Tim Finn.

Engineered and mixed by Peter Contini at Sun Studios, Brisbane.

• Joe Acaria: – drums
• Dario Bortolin: – bass guitar
• Greg Hitchcock: – guitar
• Laurence Maddy: – Hammond organ, trombone, guitar, sound effects

 

Terrible but not quite as terrible as "Walking" or "Overture". As always slickly and competently produced and played. 1.9/5. I just don't connect these three songs at all, and in a just world there would be no Coronavirus and these songs would not have been included on this album.

 

I like "Absail". It has a nice distorted guitar tone, and the end section with the phase effect reminds me of Led Zep's "In My Time of Dying". If Tim had added some vocals this would be a standout track, but it's still pretty cool as is.
3.5/5

 

"Absail" sounds like what I thought metal sounded like when I was 8. Except maybe the organ. It's very mild and background-y; another one that is hard to rank without knowing what it's playing in the background of. So I'll just go right in the middle as a testament to how inoffensive I found it.

3/5