Tim Finn: Interview: Listener - February 26, 2000

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REVIEW: "SAY IT IS SO"

New Zealand Listener: February 26, 2000
By Nick Bollinger / Nashville
(Contributed by Emma George)

Say It Is So, Tim Finn (Periscope)

Who is this guy? Blindfolded, one might initially guess it was some new American alt-roots rocker. Scrungy samples intermesh with strummy guitars and snap-and-thwack drumming that sounds a lot like Wilco.

The first real clue comes three tracks in with the jangly opening to 'Always Good Together,' and the chorus is the giveaway; a warm hug of a melody that wouldn't have been out of place on Woodface. From there on it's an interesting mixture; identifiably Finn-ish melodies filtered through rootsy Americana.

Tim Finn has changed the externals before - in some ways his career looks like a revolving musical wardrobe. He has been the vaudeville pop master of Split Enz, McCartney to his brother's Lennon for Crowded House's Woodface, and an honorary Irishman with Alt.

But it's not just the American trappings that disguise him here. The voice itself has become a coarser instrument, leaving the edges of his vocals rough and untrimmed. There's a first take looseness about the performances.

On the Neil Young-like 'Need to Be Right' (one of the toughest songs he's ever written) he weaves wildly, breaking notes as he goes. In the past, Finn often sang like a torch singer trapped inside a rock star. Defining songs such as 'I Hope I Never' and 'All I Ask' had an almost operatic staginess to them. In Say It Is So he steers away from his old theatricality. There are no big production ballads. Instead the folksy celtic modes that infused his Alt project become a meeting ground for Finn and his new collaborators.

The album was recorded in Nashville, but on the other side of the tracks from Shania Twain. Producer/guitarist Jay Joyce has worked with such country fringe-dwellers as the Wallflowers and Patti Griffin, and comfortably mixes tape loops with hollow-bodied Gibsons. Julie Miller's keening harmonies add to the mood of the 21st-century mountain music. (Yes, that is Wilco's Ken Coomer drumming).

This musical tour of America's backroads is echoed in Finn's writing. Images of motion pervade the songs, of travel on both highways and oceans. And yet in the end he brings it all back home, with the distinctly Polynesian-flavoured 'Rest.'

Seven years is a long time between solo albums and perhaps Finn's expectations have changed in that time. On the underrated Before and After he was still angling for pop hits, working with English hit factory Langer and Winstanley. But on Say It Is So he steps into more timeless territory.

As the A&R man says, "I don't hear hits. But I hear affection, maturity, soul, and all that other stuff that lasts."