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

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lance LaSalle, Jan 21, 2019.

  1. Paul H

    Paul H The fool on the hill

    Location:
    Nottingham, UK
    Island of Peace: I can't get past the piano at around the 2 minute mark that borrows liberally from the coda of Layla :)

    This is one of those tracks that means a great deal to those involved in the making but, for me, it's just a very bland melody. Not the most auspicious start to the album... 2/5.
     
  2. HitAndRun

    HitAndRun Forum Resident

    Are the Finns producing albums faster than we are covering them in this thread? :D
     
    drewrclv9, KangaMom, Anne_G and 5 others like this.
  3. Turk Thrust

    Turk Thrust Forum Resident

    Location:
    U.K.
    A nice way to kick off the album, but not one that really stands out in its own right.

    I wouldn't pick it out to listen to it individually, but it works fine for what it is.

    3/5.
     
  4. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Posting late after waiting fruitlessly at the doctor's for three hours for a blood test only to be told "It's too late for blood tests today" by the nurse who then, when I protested, said she hadn't noticed me sitting there for 3 hours. There's a word in English for this nurse that I can't say here so I'll just call her a krava. whicih is Czech for cow but which correlates to the English word.

    Our votes for "Prelude-Island of Peace"
    1-0
    2-3
    3-7
    4-3
    5-1
    Average: 2.9885
     
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  5. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Today's song is "Meet Me in the Air", written by Neil Finn, Sharon Finn, Liam Finn and Elroy Finn; produced and recorded by Tchad Blake, Neil Finn and Liam Finn; mixed by Tchad Blake.

    Neil & Liam Finn – Meet Me in the Air Lyrics | Genius Lyrics

    Liam Finn: lead vocals, electric guitar
    Neil Finn: voals, piano, synthesizer
    Connan Mockasin: lead guitar
    Sharon Finn: bass
    Elroy Finn: drums
     
  6. HitAndRun

    HitAndRun Forum Resident

    Meet Me in the Air

    I see this is written by four Finns in total. It sounds like a typical Liam song to me.

    The backing track is dreamy and floats along nicely. However, I think the relaxed nature of the backing track really needs a more standout vocal and vocal melody than what we have here.

    Overall, I find the arrangement and instrumentation very nice. It somehow reminds me of Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross', but much more modern. However, I think the song lacks a bit of melodic substance. I end up only vaguely satisified with this song. It's interesting. But, it needs ... something more

    The lines that Neil sings in the background are nicer than the lead lines.

    It is possible that I haven't played the album enough to 'get it'.

    There are songs that I like more coming up. I was a bit concerned that the whole album might be vaguely dissatisfying. But, I refreshed my memory of a few songs, and there is (in my opinion) stronger material coming up.

    3.1/5
     
  7. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    I love this song. It's so pretty.

    The lyrics are utter gibberish but we are dealing with two kings of gibberish here. I guess I find it really dreamy; and the disconnected images of the lyrics support that feel in the music, though.

    I think Neil's part is NOT more interesting than Liam's part, in fact, I just find it kind of superfluous and hard to make out; but it doesn't detract from the overall song in my opinion.

    Overall it's all about the feeling this gives me which is hard to describe.

    I have to say that my immediate reaction to this was that I liked this more than many of the songs off of both The Nihilist and Out of Silence or Dizzy Heights, and it feels a bit like all three put together. I could listen to music like this all day long.

    4.3/5
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2021
  8. StefanWq

    StefanWq Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vallentuna, Sweden
    On an intellectual level, I admire "Meet Me In The Air". I can hear that it is very well-crafted and listening to it in headphones the many subtle details in the instrumentation reveal themselves. The whole song has a very meditative feel and the vocal harmonies are stacked up nicely. However, it doesn't make me feel anything at all. It's like the album has a second intro song, only that this one goes on and on. It becomes harmless background music to me, nothing more, nothing less.
    2/5
     
  9. UrAWizHar

    UrAWizHar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    Meet Me in the Air 1/5

    Aka the Finns attempt shoegaze and fall woefully short. If I wanted to listen to this type of music (and I do, frequently) I would listen to a band who were actually good at it. This just drones on for 4 incredibly boring minutes.
     
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  10. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    I think shoegaze is typically loud and distorted rock music with kind of half-heard, pop vocal melodies -- My Bloody Valentine, Lush.

    I'd call this something like ambient lounge.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2021
  11. brownie61

    brownie61 Forum Resident

    Meet Me in the Air

    Well, a miracle happened for me on this track - I think Liam’s voice sounds great. I know I’ve spent the vast majority of my posts about Liam’s music complaining about his voice, but something is very different here. I don’t know if it’s the way his voice is processed in the production, or where it’s placed in the mix, but his voice sounds very pleasant and soothing here. Neil’s voice is a lovely counterpoint in the background.

    As for the music, it’s more about the sound and production (both of which are great) than the song itself. It’s calm and soothing and completely relaxing. It relieves tension, anxiety, and stress.

    I never pay attention to the lyrics because they don’t even matter. This one is all about the sound for me, which does live up to the title of “Meet Me in the Air.” Listening to this feels like tumbling gently among some fluffy clouds.

    This is a very chill track and is very similar to the type of music I have listened to the most and gotten into in a big way since the start of the pandemic, but I liked this track a lot even when it first came out.

    4.5/5
     
  12. UrAWizHar

    UrAWizHar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    I dunno, I would personally stick it in shoegaze if you consider bands like Engineers/Slowdive/Minor Victories who aren't necessarily classifed by distortion but still go in that box afaik, but tbh arguing about which genre music belongs to is about the most tedious discussion you can have and I'm fully prepared to be wrong/corrected so call it ambient lounge if you like and/or if that is actually what it is :righton:

    But it's still rubbish.
     
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  13. Anne_G

    Anne_G Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Meet Me in the Air - I really like the band Air. They made groovy loungey mood music around then turn of the century and I just love it. I can’t help but compare and this song falls short. It sounds a lot like their song Casanova 70. Actually it sounds like so many of their songs. A coincidence that this song has the word “air” in it?

    It’s funny, I really liked a good portion of the Pajama Club album but the Finn Family jams are starting to grate on me, especially after the remarkable (mostly) solo Neil in OOS.
    1.5/5
     
  14. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    Good point. After spending three hours in the waiting room this morning, tedium just seemed like the natural order of things.
     
  15. KangaMom

    KangaMom Queen of the Quokkas

    Meet Me in the Air - I think I'm with @StefanWq here. I can admire this song, for it's production and the overall feel (yes, I feel the floating nature of it) - but it doesn't really move me. I'm just a detached observer. So basically, the situation is I've been cautiously intrigued by the opening track and now I've got Meet Me in the Air which does give me some pause as to where this album is going. I am not all that enamored with ambient music so I'm trusting @HitAndRun when he says that stronger tracks are coming up!

    3/5 - intellectually it's very well done, emotionally I'm not invested at all.
     
  16. jimbutsu

    jimbutsu WATCH YÖUR STEPPE

    I agree with he above sentiment that there's a lot of Liam dripping off this one. I don't mind it - it's a pleasant ambient piece that slides right through its runtime unassumingly. It's one of those songs that I'd never play but when it comes on I'd think to myself "oh, this again" and carry on doing whatever I was doing, and before I know it, it's over and on to the next track.

    3/5
     
  17. BeSteVenn

    BeSteVenn FOMO Resident

    Meet Me In The Air is a song fragment in search of a song, but it's so mellow that it doesn't look very hard. And unfortunately it's looking for way too long.

    It seems like a piece of a jam that had a short, good bit extracted and repeated, was given lyrics, and mixed nicely. But there just isn't much of a song there.

    Sorry Finn family, 2/5, but only because it has a nice sound.
     
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  18. jcr64

    jcr64 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Indiana
    "Meet Me in the Air" has a dreamy, hazy feel that seems appropriate for an album called Lightsleeper, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it much. It's largely inert and repetitive. What's there is pleasant enough in a sense, but it's not nearly enough to build a song around.

    By this point of my first listen to the album, I was growing distinctly restless. I had hoped that Neil would tame the excesses of Liam's recent working pull him back in the direction of more conventional, melodic music. By the end of this second consecutive gauzy number, my hopes were fading. Fortunately, there is indeed better ahead (though maybe not immediately).

    2.5/5
     
  19. therunner

    therunner Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    I quite enjoy the dreamy sound of "Meet Me In The Air" for the first minute, but then it just sounds as if it repeats itself for the rest of the time. Maybe that's typical for this style of ambient (?) music and therefore not to be thought of as a negative of this specific song, I'm not sure because I don't listen to much of this type of music, but even if it is par for the course I still find the amount of repetition irritating, and the lack of an engaging melody frustrating.

    2/5
     
  20. Michaelpeth

    Michaelpeth Forum Resident

    Location:
    Durham, UK
    Lightsleeper is an album I've avoided so far. I've listened to both songs posted in the last two days and I won't be listening again. Both very poor unfortunately.
     
  21. brownie61

    brownie61 Forum Resident

    I am clearly the odd one out with this album. Maybe I am insane. I’m actually embarrassed about what I posted yesterday regarding Island of Peace, true though it is.:sigh:
     
  22. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus Thread Starter

    No, I love it, well most of it. I’m really genuinely surprised to see these songs do so badly, in a way I wasn’t with Dizzy Heights or Pajama Club, which I fully expected.

    The music is so pretty! But to each their own.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2021
  23. Michaelpeth

    Michaelpeth Forum Resident

    Location:
    Durham, UK
    Thats what great about music. We disagree but we are both right !
     
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  24. DanP

    DanP Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    My family and I visited the South Island of NZ two years ago. In Queenstown you can get on a chairlift and go up the mountain that overlooks the whole town. The winter views were astonishing, the kids got to play on a huge Tonka truck and laugh at death on the viewing platform, there was an enormous Jelly Belly emporium, had a kind of deep conversation with my dad that you tend not to have at home, and I saw a couple of former students who said hi and wished me well as if it were the most natural and casual re-connection you could imagine. Meet Me in the Air was playing in my head the whole time.


    [​IMG]
     
  25. Turk Thrust

    Turk Thrust Forum Resident

    Location:
    U.K.
    With this one, I feel like the overall sound of the piece is almost more important than the song itself.

    When this album was first released, I would listen to it through earphones as I walked to and from work each day. A really good way to block out the stresses of life and that's how I will always think of it.

    It doesn't sound quite so impressive in an individual song discussion thread like this, but another solid 3/5.
     

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