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

Hah, you beat me to it by 29 minutes, I was going to say exactly the same thing. I'm not sure whether to 'blame' Tim's musical leanings at that time or Jay Joyce as producer, who has a Nashville background. Or maybe Tim deliberately chose a country-ish producer because of his leanings at that time ?

Whatever the reasons, it doesn't suit my ears either, especially the twangy guitar which is like fingernails down a blackboard to me.

And it's another of Tim's underdeveloped ad-jingle style melodies that I find musically uninteresting.

2/5

 

Good Together - This is the first song on this album that I love. It’s catchy and I love the sentiment. However, the version on Together in Concert is the version that I love. The version on Say It Is So sounds a little antiseptic to me. I’m not going to rate this song twice.

4.5/5 (For Together in Concert version)

 

"Good Together", very good album track but still one of the slightly lesser ones for me. I like Tim's vocals here, but the female vocalist not so much.
3.75/5

 

"Good Together" doesn't sound like country music to me. Julie Miller's voice doesn't do much for me, but then it's mixed pretty far back except for the "give me a minute of your time", so not too offensive. It's a catchy little song but nothing special. 3/5

 

Am I the only one who finds Tim’s vocals almost painful here (in comparison with his formerly beautiful voice)? Yes he sounds sincere and authentic and that’s mostly what’s important, but...his voice almost yelps at times. I remember being worried for him at the time. Only 48 years old and suddenly this?? Has he ever spoken about it?
It’s a sweet and pleasant, heartfelt tune. I get why it’s a good wedding song. But I still can’t get past his deteriorating voice on this record. It’s like Harrison’s Dark Horse album. Not that bad but just as disconcerting.

3.5/5

 

I forgot how great this song was! This and Underwater Mountain are by far the most Crowded House-like songs we’ve heard from Tim’s solo career so far. I love the instrumental break right after the bridge where the chamberlin strings and electric guitar briefly seem to climb to the sky. And Tim and Julie Miller do sound Good Together. I deduct a half point for some cliched lines in the chorus. 4/5.

 

I don't know if you are the only one. I've been listening to this album for 20 years -- not constantly-- so I've had time to get used to it.
I think losing his voice was the best thing that happened to Tim's solo career.

I wrote a post on here in eulogy of his youthful voice when we finished Before and After.. I think he had one of the greatest voices of the 1970s, underrated because Split Enz is pretty obscure -- there are bootlegs I have where everything sounds like sludge and Tim's voice still comes through loud and clear -- it just delivered melody in a great and very simple way, it could cut through any noise: no matter how busy or how many things Eddie Rayner threw into the arrangement, the song still always had Tim's voice to anchor it, delivering the melody.

There are dozens of songs from 1973-1993 when I listen and I think "hmmm...do people realize how incredibly hard this song is to sing in this particular key and how hard Tim is nailing it?" Because I don't think people do.

Songs like "Semi-Detached" or even the folk throwaway "Horse to Water"..."I HOpe I Never" or "Bon Voyage" , some of his solo songs even -- like one male singer in a hundred could sing those songs in that key, in my opinion, stay in tune and on key and express some heart and sound somehow masculine.

And it had a certain character -- it was unique. Again there are the Gary Dyson-sung Tim-written songs from Southern Cross that bear this out. The songs that Tim sang on that album sound so much better just because his voice has a certain natural character that Dyson didn't

But there were times, it was almost too good: my main problem with Escapade is that it's so effortless that I feel that he does not bring the heart the lite-pop -- he's too busy sounding pretty. And those kind of pop songs need heart to get them across.

I'm music-positive...I am not someone who looks for reasons to dislike music. Other people do, that's just not how my brain works: I think that human expression has a multitudinous variety of forms and is a beautiful thing. Sometimes I have a visceral reaction of dislike to some music, but it's really pretty rare. When people write thigns like "I can't find anything wrong with it" on these threads, I'm always a bit puzzled. I relate to Lou Reed in that rant against Robert Christgau on that one live album: (I paraphrase) "you work your ass off for a year putting your heart on record and some mother$%#@% wants to give you B+?"

So I tend to look for reasons to like something, rather than the opposite. With that attitude I look at it like this:

In a nutshell, I simply think he changed from being that kind of glossy technically proficient singer, to a more folksy, one-of-a-kind singer: one something like older Dylan (in the early or mid-80s, he has yet to lose his voice like Dylan did from the late 80s on) or Tom Waits, or Joe Strummer or any number of singer-songwriters, actually. A singer whose limitation is actually their strength.
Also, I think his voice sounds actually stronger here than it did on Altitude or Finn. We went over about a fifteen songs from 94-96 that Tim wrote for other artists that he did NOT sing -- some of them he produced -- and I think it's because he really had lost his voice almost completely at that time.

Here and on Steel City I feel he had learned how to use it. And I've said it before, but I don't think he could have technically sung these songs at age 30 -- they are too low-pitched.

 

Our votes for "Good Together"

1-0
2-3
3-2
4-10
5-3
Average: 3.602

 

Today's song is "Roadtrip" (one-word, nineties-style), written by Tim Finn & Marie Azcona; produced by Jay Joyce.

Spotify: Roadtrip



A stripped down earlier version of this song called "Road Trip" (two words) was released on Dein Perry's Steel City in 1998. Our discussion of that version is HERE. This earlier version was also released as a B-side for the European single "Twinkle" in 2000. I spent 30$ last summer for a an imported copy of "Twinkle" to be sent back to me in Europe from Madison, Wisconsin because I'm an idiot. Think of all the cheap booze and hookers I could have bought!


Line up:
Tim Finn: Vocals, acoustic guitar
Jay Joyce: Guitars, keyboards, sounds
Bruce Bouton: pedal Steel
Chris Feinstein: bass
Ken Coomer: drums
Julie Miller: backing vocals

(speculative:
Greg Hitchcock: lap steel
Jody Phillis: additional backing vocals)

Lyric doesn't seem available, so,

Travelling the open road
Hands on the wheel
Can I be dreaming?
Cause when I felt you staring
I knew I wasn't lost

Playing your soundtrack
feet on the dashboard
So much going on
And here in the front seat
There's only you and me

Travelling the open road
Hands on the wheel
Can I be dreaming?
Cause when I felt you staring I knew
I wasn't lost
I knew I wasn't lost

We're going downtown
Digging the feeling
Shifting through the gears
Sliding in closer
It's only you and me

Travelling the open road
Hands on the wheel
Can I be dreaming?
Cause when I felt you staring I knew
I wasn't lost
I knew that I wasn't lost

We can see for miles and miles and miles

 

The original recording sounds like a demo in comparison to the more produced remake. I like the latter more because the additional instrumentation/production adds interest. However, I do think they overdid it somewhat. This is a fine track, and enjoyable enough. But it never rises above that. 3/5.

 

I like both versions but I prefer this one mainly because I really like the undulating female vocal at the end -- the original recording sounds really truncated, it just kind of ends abruptly; I prefer the ending here, it calls to my mind the sun coming up on a road journey that began at night.

Otherwise, I kind of see the two versions as really different experiences: the first one makes me think of someone driving in the country during a hot summer's day: this one makes me feel like someone is driving in a big blinking, neon-lit city at night. It's really picturesque, which goes with the image-loaded lyric.

And I like all the instrumentation: there is a LOT going on; listening this morning on headphones I heard a drum part that sounds to a little like the "Suffer Never" drum pattern going on about half way through the song in the center channel...I'd never heard that part until today. Jay Joyce went nuts on this one. He's a great musician: think of the jingle-jangle 12-string of the last song and compare it with the guitars and synth noises, and loops here!

My strong suspicion is that this is in fact the earlier version, only with a lot of overdubs: that lap steel solo sounds exactly the same as the one on Steel City -- and it's not like it's a virtuosic display, but it does have a certain character --and there are some backing vocals during that part also sound exactly the same as Jody Phillis's. And of course, I love a pedal steel guitar and it's put to good use here.

I also quite like the lyric, great song, just misses masterpiece status for me. 4.5/5

 

This, for me, is one of my favourite songs on the album. I don't really know why, but the whole thing just works for me. I agree that Tim had learned how to use his 'new' voice here, and the song and production/arrangement works well. I also like the background vocals, particularly at the end.

4.5/5

@Lance LaSalle - could you give me the first song title for the '15 songs that Tim wrote for other artists that he did not sing'. I'd like to go back and revise that part of this thread.

 

Gee that's a nice post! In honour of your and others' great contributions, I'll listen to my Say It Isn't So disc for the first time ever. I'm sure to like it as much, and for similar reasons, as those of you who are enthusiastic about it...

 

I'm not exactly sure whereyou missed: here are some miscellaneous Tim songs songs he wrote or co-wrote for others in 94-96, eleven in all actually -- there was all the Finn and Altitude albums in this time plus a few scattered extra-album songs under his name :

• Blue Hills 2.68
• Stand Back: 3.8875
• Happy

• *If You Don't Know By Now/Last Day of Summer
• *Jacqui
• *Because She Loves it
• *Whole Thing
• *Blue You
• *The Honey Bee
• *Princess Tabu
• *Don't Wanna Be a Nutcase

.

 

I prefer the spare arrangement of Road Trip on Steel City. When listened to in the context of the rest of Say It Is So, the production on this remake makes a little more sense, but the human, emotional connection is lost. The vocals, guitars, bass and drums are good, but the noisy, scratchy, rhythmic distorted sounds ruin the track for me. The quality of the songwriting still shines through however, and raises the score a bit.

3.7/5

 

No, no, no.

Tuneless and harsh on the ears.

1/5.

 

"Roadtrip" is one of my favorites from the album, this version is much better that the Steel City version. Nice percussive rhythm loop, distorted guitar, effects, yeah, this does it for me.
4.5/5

 

This version, on the other hand, seems overproduced to me even though it's the same song.

3.4/5

 

Reports from Peter Green on the Frenz Forum back in the day learn the Split Enz sessions took two weeks in July-August 1999 and yielded between 5 to 10 mostly unfinished songs. “Lord Nord” was supposed to receive more work in the form of instrumentation and vocals. A Nord is a certain type of keyboard instrument. Although more Enz-members may own one I suspect it is mainly a Eddie Rayner contribution, but it’s a mere guess.

 

Thanks!

 

Roadtrip - This song starts out sounding like it’s going to be a really cool off kilter Tom Waits-like track. Then the vocal parts start and the song changes to something much less interesting. I think there are good ideas here, but the song itself is the weakest link of the track. The song is okay, the arrangement of sounds going on around the song itself is much more interesting.

3/5

 

There is just too much instrumentation and effects going on for me in "Roadtrip", so much that I can't find the song underneath it all, not that I think the song has much melody to find anyway.

1/5

 

"Roadtrip" is a really good song in my estimation. I strongly prefer the stripped down version from Steel City, but I do like this more psychedelic version as well. The pedal steel really makes this version. It offers a nice contrast with the droning fuzzy guitar tones. I also like the second shadow vocal (apparently by Jody Phillis).

I gave the two-word version a 4.3 (which almost seems too low given how much I actually like it), so I'll give this version a 3.8....which I suppose is sort of like a 'B+' (don't tell Tim, but I would have been more scared of Lou Reed clocking me for it than Tim).

 

"Roadtrip" is more of a soundscape than a conventional song, but very fascinating. There's a lot going on around Tim's rather rough voice - loops, weird sounds and many layers of instruments - yet the song itself has a meditative feel to it. I get a sense of a narrator who is very comfortable about his life, relaxed behind the wheel, driving through a dramatic landscape and seeing possibilities rather than problems. I hear it as a metaphor for a person who has found a way of dealing with whatever chaos and turmoil life may throw in his way, perhaps because meditation (whether via road trips, swimming or other ways of meditation) has given him an inner peace of mind.
The blend of the meditative melody and the very busy backing track makes "Roadtrip" a very special track.
4/5

 

This version of "Roadtrip" is much less enjoyable to me than the original. The distorted, chopped-up sounds are downright unpleasant. 2/5