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

I don't recall this being issued on coloured vinyl. Mine is yer regular ole black.

 

Oh. I must be confused.

 

Well, I am. That's just my "normal"

 

I'm so wholly indifferent to this song that I can't give it a rating, good or bad. It literally generated no response/reaction in me (I'm also among the number who can't hear any Neil Finn in there). No rating for me on this one...

 

I could really mess things up here and give What Am I Doing Wrong top marks, but that would answer the question "What Am I Doing Wrong?" (And it wouldn't be honest of me.)

I'll fall into line, take the day off, and go back to cleaning the basement.

 

"What Am I Doing Wrong" is like nails on a chalkboard. I genuinely hate it. But I also hear no indication of Neil's participation, whatever the credits may say, so I'll pretend he wasn't involved and won't rate it.

 

According to Discogs, Neil plays bass on "What Am I Doing Wrong" and that seems to be the extent of his involvement in this song. It's a decent rock song with the distorted vocals giving it some character, but probably not a song I will return to.
2,5/5

 

This is quite good. Would fit right in on Queens of the Stone Age's 2007 album Era Vulgaris. Twisted, stylish and dirty with the cool distorted vocal makes me pretty fond of this. Maybe lacks a little bit of substance, but I like it.

4/5

 

Well, I feel kind of dumb holding it up if Neil's only contribution was bass. I generally only like to do it if he's singing co-lead or co-writing. I wonder why it's given such prominence on Neil's site -- and the iTunes says "featuring Neil Finn", which seems kind of to give a misleading impression that Neil is more involved than he was.

Since hardly anybody voted, and since Neil actually only seems to have been a session bassist on this, I suppose I'll just pretend that nobody voted and not tally up the three or four votes for this.

 

Today's song is "Prelude --Island Of Peace", written by Neil Finn and produced and recorded by Tchad Blake, Neil Finn and Liam Finn. Mixed by Tchad Blake.

Lyric.

This song was written by Neil for Liam and his new wife and was sung by a choir on Liam's wedding day and is meant as a message to the newlyweds. I assume that the choir was recorded at Studio C in Greece.

Neil Finn: vocals, synthesizer, drum programming
Liam Finn: vocals

Barnes Family, Connan Mockasin, Jimmy Metherell, Devo Finns: choir

 

I don't like the way the choir is recorded, but that's OK.

It's a sweet song -- I enjoy the very New Zealand accent on the "Together, together". This does make for a very good intro the album and I note that the album both begins and ends with "advice"-- to a man on his wedding day and a woman giving birth to her firstborn.

4.1/5

 

It's nice that Neil wrote this for Liam's wedding, but it's kind of strange as the lead-off song on a studio album that has their names on it. Too grandiose, and reminds me too much of the choir on Out of Silence that we just left behind.

I actually like the experimental beginning and end of this track more than the actual meat of it. The first 40 seconds is really cool and sounds like it's going to lead somewhere, then we cut into the almost overwhelmingly melancholy main part, and it sounds almost like a bait and switch kind of deal. It's like someone just changed the radio station and it's kind of jarring.

The sound of the very beginning is quite cool and exhibits shades of Neil's first two solo albums in its sonics and intriguing atmosphere. What follows is kind of bland and mundane to me. Overall, not terrible or anything, but probably should have just been left as a song for the wedding or used as a b-side.

3/5

 

Prelude - Island of Peace

I absolutely adore this song. While the synthesized sounds make this sound almost like a demo and tend towards the goofy, there is no denying the heartfelt, deep emotion in the lyrics and melody. I can overlook the missteps because this song makes me so emotional that it more often than not makes me cry.

“Tell us you love her.”

That must have been one beautiful wedding,

The choir is where it belongs in the recording, tastefully in the background.

5/5

 

Prelude - Island of Peace

One of the advantages of being a Finn Family member is that you get Neil to write a song for your wedding day.

Given that the last we heard from Neil on this thread was the very acoustic Out of Silence, here we have him on synthesisers and drum programming. And piano.

It's an interesting song. And, I think the arrangement makes something of it. Perhaps the lead vocal could be more prominent, and I think it's easy to let it go past in the background because of that. Hmm... I think this song somehow makes everything sound like it's in the background and I'm not sure what's in the foreground.

I think it works very well as an album-opener. More of a appetiser than the main course.

3.8/5

 

Prelude- I haven’t heard this album at all so looking forward to processing it with you all. This track is unremarkable to me, I may have listened to this little bit then decided not to dive in. Yah I’m shallow like that.

2/5

 

Prelude - Island of Peace. It's nice to know the background for this song. I can easily imagine it for Liam and Janine's wedding.
The experimental sounds are initially a bit jarring for me (at the start and end) but having listened to it once, I'm now intrigued by what is going to come on the rest of the album.

Like @HitAndRun I think this is a bit of an appetizer for Lightsleeper.

3/5 (because now I'm being cautious on my ratings...belatedly)

 

Prelude/Island of Peace" is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the layered harmonies of the verses are beautiful. They tugged at my heart even before I learned of the song's original purpose. On the other hand, the chorus ("together, together") may be adequate and appropriate for a wedding, but it's awfully thin for a commercially-released song. Then there's the production style" it's awfully murky, specially in the lower ranges, which seem coated with thick soup. The only clear sounds on the recording are the various electronic bleeps, bloops, and buzzes, but for me they move beyond a distraction and become an active irritant, a swarm of gnats around my head that I find myself trying to shoo away. As an opening track, "Prelude/Island of Peace" has moments of genuine beauty but also gives me plenty of reason to be concerned about what's to come. (I've listened to the album intermittently since its release, so I know what's to come, but I'll confine my comments to the opening track in this post.)

3/5

 

An aside: Last night, I had a variant on a fairly standard stress dream. I was to play drums in a concert for Crowded House. Bear in mind that I'm not a drummer and never have been. The whole dream was set in the 45 minutes or so before sound check, but before the band fully assembled, I woke up in a panic. I never even got to meet Neil Finn, though, given his perfectionist streak, that's probably just as well.

 

Prelude - Island of Peace is a nice way to start Lightsleeper. There are nice bits and pieces of melody on top of a nice, but simple chord sequence. There could have had fewer electronic gurgling noises, and it would have been nice to have not end by dribbling off into just those gurgles. I suspect it was beautiful to hear and to participate in at the ceremony, but those gurgles ...

3/5

 

Looking at you sideways, I'm wondering what you did to Elroy to give you the opportunity to play.

BTW: There are modern drum machines that fit in your pocket. You can fake it

 

"Prelude/Island of Peace": I really struggle with this one as an opener. I think my main issue is with the choir and how similar it sounds to the previous album, and especially its opener "Love Is Emotional" (which to me is the least impressive track by far on Out of Silence). As HitAndRun points out, the way the lead vocal blends into the gauziness of the choir is very noticeable, and to me the whole thing just sounds cloying and slight. When they sing "Together, together," it often sounds to me like they're singing "Get up! Get up! Ahhhhh!" I recall being very pessimistic about the album when I first heard this and the next track, but it got much, much better from that point onward: 2/5.

By the way, I was too busy to participate in the Out of Silence discussions, but I'd like to share a few thoughts about the album as a whole. Much like Lightsleeper, I dislike the opening track and generally feel like the overall "live choir in the studio" was a fascinating idea that just didn't work for me in practice. But again, as with Lightsleeper, it got better for me after the first couple tracks, though I never thought the choirs and overall production did anything any favors. But unlike several of you, I absolutely love the final three tracks beginning with "The Law Is On Your Side" (the starker album version of which works far better for me than the choir-sweetened version posted in the thread). Those tracks felt far more substantial to me (both musically and lyrically) than the rest of the album, and felt like the return of a kind of brilliance that I'd found lacking in much of Neil's post TWT material. So my overall feelings about the album are somewhat mixed--on balance, I think the parts I enjoy outweigh the parts I don't: 4/5

 

This has really strong Opening Ceremony vibes to me. I just can't connect with it - it doesn't land at all. The last few years of Finn music have been really challenging for me, and I almost feel somehow guilty for not enjoying most of the recent past as much I sometimes think I should.

2.5/5

 

I'm sure "Island Of Peace" worked wonderfully at the wedding, but ignoring the context and listening to it purely as an album track which has to hold its own within Neil's body of work it does not have much going for it. Perhaps the choir here would not irritate me quite so much if there had not been a choir on so many Out Of Silence songs (in case you missed the subtle implication I don't like choirs) so by this stage it feels like Neil is far too choir-obsessed. And I also don't like the weird sounds at the end.

2/5

 

As a quite short intro track, "Prelude - Island of Peace" is serving its purpose well and giving listeners an idea of what kind of album to expect. Some weird sounds and an experimental feel to begin with and then a snippet of semi-loungey keyboard-driven soundscape, rather than hooky guitar-based pop. It's nice to know it was written for Liam's wedding, but I'm not that moved, it feels a bit vague and unfinished.
2,8/5

 

Looks like the Eddie Rayner/Tim Finn/Phil Manzanera/Noel Crombie Forenzics album, Shades And Echoes, is coming out “in spring” which I’m pretty sure means “autumn” for most of us.

ORiGiN Music signs Eddie Rayner as NZ keyboard maestro finalises five projects

And Tim and Manzanera’s album’s out on CD at the end of August and I’m quite sure Liam will have an album out in the next month or two, too. Good year for Finn fans, this.