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

Our votes for "Roadtrip"

1-2
2-1
3-3
4-3
5-3
Average: 3.2

 

Today's song is "Currents", written by Tim Finn and produced by Jay Joyce.

Spotify: Currents

Not-entirely-accurate lyrics HERE.

Line Up

• Tim Finn - vocals, acoustic guitar
• Jay Joyce - guitars, keyboards, sounds
• Bruce Bouton: Pedal Steel
• Chris Feinstein - bass
• Ken Coomer - drums

 

Currents hits a very sweet spot. Ken Coomer's drumming sounds great, and the guitars sound like they were done by the late, great Jay Bennett (when they were dismissed from Wilco, they lost their secret weapons). This almost sounds like a Summerteeth outtake.

But it's completely a great song from Tim, one of my top 10 Tim songs of all time. (Despite a few of those rhymes, but it's only a pop song so I don't mind.) 5/5

 

It's a really pretty, sunny song; another exercise in sweet and simple folk-pop , with a simple lyric about "going with the flow" and "following my dreams" (water again) and thus finding love that had eluded him; there's again this sense of freedom in the song, the freedom that comes from following life's lead rather than trying to bend it to your will; the fact that it's a bit of a cliche does not make it less true. It feels real and unforced and thus it delivers for me. This is certainly the most genuinely happy album of Tim's entire career from 1973 to now.

I think the bliss of relatively new love and a new baby in the house was really coming through in the music. He was still in the honeymoon period.

The synth strings and shimmering layers of guitars and the lovely pedal steel really add a lot of depth and color: the sort of synth-string solo at the beginning is one of my favorite instrumental moments of Tim's solo career. There are actually quite a lot of interesting details in the production that all kind of work together to serve the song.

It's another highlight for me and I give it a 4.7/5

 

Yes, I like Currents very much. I kind of crept up on me. The chiming guitars, some simple but beautiful slide over the top, and - although it's a bit of a cliche - the quieter verse that suddenly takes off into the chorus works very effectively. 4/5.

 

Posting this for awareness rather than contributing to the thread - but Neil has just dropped a new single "Find Your Way Back Home" with Stevie Nicks which is raising funds for the Auckland City Mission -

 

Thanks!

 

For me, this is a good song but not one of the standouts. It's a good simple love song. The melody is good but not exceptional, as is the arrangement.

3.5/5

 

A reasonable song, but the weaknesses in Tim's voice are pretty clear and some of the lyrics are a little generic and cheesy.

It does improve after the first 30 seconds though...

3/5.

 

It's a nice song and well crafted, and very sweet, but something about it feels overly simplistic to me.

3.5/5

EDIT:
Just realized I more or less paraphrased @HitAndRun note for note on his take.

 

"Roadtrip"--A pretty interesting sound collage--the song part isn't too engaging on its own, IMHO, but it works pretty well as a sort of accompaniment to the instrumentation. I kind of like the rougher voice as a sort of textural instrument: 3.7/5

"Currents"--A nice one. It doesn't get off to the greatest start with the generic rhythm guitar part, but the lap steel adds some charm, and then the layered chorus works well, as does Tim's vocal, the somewhat vulnerable texture of which helps prevent the whole thing from sounding overly smooth: 4/5

(And that new Neil song and video is really good!!!)

 

It’s nice, I haven’t seen the video, but got the song off iTunes. Makes me hungry for the “Crowded House” album I was sure would be out by now.

 

"Currents" - Beautiful song, nice melody, positive message, what's not to like? 4/5

 

"Currents" is a lovely, breezy pop-rock song. It's missing that hard-to-define something that would elevate it to the top echelon of Tim songs for me. Still, I like it. Nice lyric too.

3.8/5

 

I'd strongly recommend the video. Much of it lingers on a series of empty but very clearly lived-in interiors of private Auckland-area residences from a wide variety of walks of life. It's remarkably moving.

 

I agree with the general consensus, "Currents" is a pleasantly inoffensive little ditty of a pop song with a simplistic melody and generic lyrics, and Tim's limited vocal range is not really shown up too much here. But it's instantly forgettable the minute it finishes.

2/5

 

Currents - Another good song that is let down by its production. There is a good song here buried under the inoffensive but uninspiring production. I saw Tim play a solo show in 2007 and he was great! I wish studio recordings could capture how great both Finns truly are.

3/5

 

I kind of hate videos.

 

Really? Can't say that that's ever come up before...

 

"Currents" is both meditative and catchy at the same time. Every time I hear this I imagine a beautiful lush forest with chirping colourful birds, a gentle waterfall and the rays of the sun shining down on a lake. A state of bliss, and again it's a shimmering song.
The lyrics kind of sum up the vibe of the whole record, of embracing life for both its ups and downs and not being afraid of the odd setbacks. It makes me think of the Split Enz song "Master Plan" which has more the opposite message - "All things come to those who base their every action on a proper strategy", the determination of a control freak but also the worry that things will fall apart by the tiniest mistake.
I also feel that this album is sequenced very well, "Currents" is the perfect track to follow "Roadtrip" and appear before "Need To Be Right".
4,8/5

 

Our votes for "Currents"

1-0
2-1
3-2
4-6
5-3
Average: 3.775

 

Today's song is "Need to Be Right", written by Tim Finn and produced by Jay Joyce.

Spotify: Need To Be Right

.A more restrained, one-man-band version of "Need to Be Right" was recorded and released by Tim in 2006 on The BJB Sessions, and I will hold that one later up for discussion separately after Imaginary Kingdom.

This song was originally released in 1998 on the Far Out EP. The Far Out version is identical to this one -- one thing about Far Out though is that the mastering is not so loud.

 

This is, unfortunately, probably my least favourite song on the album. It sort of plods along without enough to keep my interest. The arrangement tries to sell the song, but the melody doesn't engage me enough. Tim's singing on this sounds 'wrong' in a different way from the gruffer sung songs on the album, but it sounds like he's straining a bit. When I play the album I get impatient to get onto Twinkle.

Listening to it now, it sounds like there is a melody there trying to get out, but somehow it doesn't quite make it. Perhaps I'm being unfair.

2.8/5

I prefer this simpler version (which may be the one that will be discussed later.)

 

I think that this is one of the live, or nearly live, songs on the album (well, pretty obviously, actually.)

It's a raw slice, a cry from the heart: the lyrics are raw, the singing is raw, even veering off key, which Tim has never done before, the ragged band is raw. They could have recorded another take that was tighter, and they probably did, but they obviously chose to release this version due to the sheer emotion. I applaud that, I think more albums should be recorded live, and I have no doubt that if I saw this live, right in front of me somewhere, I would be utterly blown out of this galaxy by the sheer emotion of it.

I suppose that it was written after an argument with Marie. There's something almost childlike about the lyric -- I feel that in leaving it in this raw state he was really trying to bare himself in a way that he hadn't before: normally there's this arty veneer to Tim songs, to most songs, really, and he really tried hard to strip that away with this song, and maybe the album in general. Compare this to "I Hope I Never", a song written after Phil Judd's wife told Tim that Phil didn't want to talk to him:"I Hope Has Been" has been carefully processed and the Tim feels rather removed from the emotion that drives the song, by the time he finished; it's been homogenized so that it could be about any relationship anywhere. This song is the exact opposite of that. There is no arty veneer and it's a cry from the heart.

But while I think it's a great live performance, I also really feel that despite the really palpable emotion of the wildly out of control performance, I have to say I prefer the more restrained arrangment from 2006; which is the opposite of this one performance-wise: that's all Tim, carefully overdubbing parts on top of each other; naturally that version is less emotional, but the song becomes the star, rather than the performance.

I'll give this version a 3.4/5

 

Yes, that's the BJB Sessions version which will be discussed after Imaginary Kingdom.