Neil Finn: The Finn Dynasty

Neil Finn started 2013 with an impressive, ARIA- nominated run of shows with fellow troubadour Paul Kelly. Behind-the-scenes, however, Finn was readying Dizzy Heights, his first major release since signing a publishing deal with Kobalt in 2011. TMN chatted to Finn about the new record, his back catalogue, songwriting, family, and everything in-between.

This record, moreso than previous ones, seems to take repeated listens to begin to make sense.

Yeah, it’s not a particularly modern concept, in terms of expecting people to listen to something more than once, but hopefully it will reveal itself over time. I mean, expecting people to do that is quite hard these days, and I know I’m the same. But I do think a slow reveal is always a good sign for a record. I know myself, if I’m on the third or fourth listen with a record and things are starting to find their way in, then I know it’s something that will have a little bit of longevity.

Do you remember how the album began to take shape? Was there any kind of game-plan?

I’m always just writing and doing demos. Occasionally you get little... they’re not usually complete songs, and they’re often just hoisted together quite quickly often with room for improvement. You get an atmosphere come through with each recording, so I just gathered together a little collection of things that seemed related in some way, but in other ways they’re just individual collections of songs until you get them into a studio with a band and a producer and you find there are connecting threads. You know, it’s an exploration from that point on, trying to keep performance to the forefront, rather than having some plan that you feel you have to stick to.

Do you find that you sometimes have to trick yourself into discovering new structures or chord patterns?

I’ll employ pretty much any device known to writers, from pure inspiration to complete skullduggery, so I don’t mind the individual way they unfold. They’re mysterious little beasts, songs, and I don’t mind leaving some of it mysterious either.

Did some songs take longer to pull together than others?

A few of them went through several incarnations. Funnily enough, Strangest Friends was the one with the most evolved demo, and that one was the hardest to get a new track of. White Lies and Alibis started life sounding like an Olympic Games’ anthem, and has now ended up quite a tense, albeit beautiful arrangement.

Do you ever get overwhelmed by choices when songwriting, and not know where you’re supposed to take them?

Yeah, of course. Sometimes you get lost days where a song isn’t working and you can’t nut it out. But I’m a big believer in endurance: you just keep at it and eventually a little crack in the wall appears, or a little flash of inspiration happens, but I don’t rely on that happening every day. Some days you just have to get some work done and hope that it’s all gonna come together the next day.

Do your three solo albums feel like a trilogy, like parts of the one whole?

I can’t quite get my head around looking at it that way, but I know that people probably will see it like that. For me, I put an equal amount of care and attention into each record, the names that they come out under and the collaborators I work with – collaborators are a very important part of it - I know it means something and there is branding and all that, but it just feels like part of a continuum to me.

The rest of this article is in the Australian Music Industry Quarterly – out now. To read on, click here.