Band Of Brothers

Brothers Neil and Tim Finn have now enjoyed success in at least four different incarnations over four decades.

They first emerged as members of seminal Kiwi new wave band Split Enz, then with the hugely successful Crowded House and later they pursued solo careers. More recently they’ve reconvened as The Finn Brothers whose latest album Everyone Is Here showcases some of their strongest material to date. At their recent Dublin shows they performed songs from all of their past musical adventures including such Crowded House favourites as ‘Weather With You’, ‘It’s Only Natural’ and ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ (the latter featuring one time House member and Dublin resident Nick Seymour). They even pulled out the old Split Enz hit, ‘I Got You’ for the encore – much to the delight of the crowds.
“There are pros and cons to having all of those different entities throughout our careers,” says Neil Finn, chatting backstage at the Olympia just prior to showtime. “A lot of people prefer the certainty of just one thing. It’s easier for them to hang on to and certainly commercially it would be a lot easier for us.
“The thing is we’re not Split Enz and we’re not Crowded House but we can do a pretty good job on either of those band’s songs because we’ve got the voices and the guitars. The ones that we’re doing in the set seem to be the ones that suit this line-up and that are not a disappointment to people who have got used to the Split Enz or Crowed House versions.”
Despite the popularity of the classics the material from Everyone Is Here was almost as well received.
“Yeah, the audience that we’re getting now on this tour seem to be very open, they don’t mind what they get,” Finn enthuses. “They get touchstones from different eras but they’re quite up to date with what we’re doing at the moment.
“I’m very grateful for the fact that people want to come along and see us. If there’s a yardstick for what we do it’s in connecting with audiences. It’s much more reliable in some ways than the albums because people buy records for different reasons. People make a connection with somebody’s voice and it makes them feel better to be in the same room as somebody whose music they like.”
Whatever their current incarnation the Finn sound remains accessible, harmony laden pop songs like the recent single, ‘Won’t Give In’ and album tracks like ‘Disembodied Voices’ and ‘Edible Flowers’.
“We’re always going for the classic pop songwriting style,” Finn explains. “We don’t always get there but what I like about a great pop song, as opposed to a great singer-songwriter kind of song is that a great pop song allows people to join in and sing it even if they don’t know much about music. Sometimes these singer-songwriters are just too earnest. It’s like Tom Waits once said ‘Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s good’. The three-minute pop song seems to have endured. There’s got to be some good reason for that.”
There have long been rumours of large sums of money on offer for a Crowded House reunion. Is there any possibility that it’ll happen in the near future?
“I’m sure we could do really well if we got back together again. But I’ve enough money and I’m very happy so I wouldn’t do it for the money alone. The longer you go on if you have a few hits along the way it builds into something substantial.
“There are some practical aspects to it in that I live in New Zealand, Nick Seymour [bassist] lives in Dublin and Paul Hester [drums] lives in Melbourne. The fact that we did break up was significant. I could have kept the name going and gotten a new band and made it like a brand but I didn’t. It’s not something that I would ever say is closed, that would infer some sort of resentment or desire to kill it dead and it’s not like that. But the circumstances under which we might want to do something again just haven’t occurred, yet.”b

Everyone Is Here is out now on Parlophone