Neil Finn Displays Solo Strength
“Does anyone know what denomination worshipped
here?” Neil Finn asked the small but vociferous
group of fans that came to see him perform at this converted church
in suburban Detroit, its previous incarnation recalled by stained
glass windows, cathedral ceiling and pew marks still on the floor.
“Let’s see if we can evoke a few ghosts.”
Like most new solo artists, Finn knows plenty about ghosts. The
singer-guitarist-songwriter has two decades of them — first from
Split Enz, the quirky New Zealand pop outfit for
which he and older brother Tim formed a creative
nucleus, and then from Crowded House, the more
commercially successful band he led from 1985-96.
So Finn is a solo career newbie (though he did record one album
as a duo with his brother in ’95), but with his new album, Try
Whistling This, and his first-ever solo tour show he’s entered
the fray enthusiastically, making up for a bit of lost time and
cleansing himself from the experience of “a band where everyone
tried to upstage each other all the time,” as he good-naturedly
referred to Crowded House during his one-hour and 50-minute
performance.
Following a captivating opening set of ambient soul by label
mate Morley (her debut hits stores Sept. 1 —
you’ll want it), Finn and his four-piece band (including his
14-year-old son Liam, a brooding Nick Cave
lookalike, on guitar and drums) wasted no time demonstrating his
appetite for change while reassuring the crowd that he’s still a
slave to the well-crafted pop song. But craft leaves plenty of room
for sonic enhancement, so Finn opened his show by picking up a bass
and leading his group into the techno-flavored swirl of the new
album’s “Twisty Bass,” switching microphones for clean and treated
vocals.
It was a dramatic statement, a declaration of a creative
ambition but with enough melody to assure the faithful that the
evening would not be entirely unfamiliar. He needn’t have worried.
Though 11 of the night’s 18 songs came from Try Whistling
This, the fans were singing along with every chorus and
cheerfully participating in call-and-response portions during
“Faster Than Light” and “She Will Have Her Way.” Finn didn’t ignore
his past, either, offering up Split Enz’ “I Got You” as well as
acoustic renditions of Crowded House’s “Hole in the River,” “Don’t
Dream It’s Over” and “Four Seasons in One Day” — the latter in
response to a note tossed onstage by one fan.
That was a nice moment, as were Finn’s many caustic comments and
comic asides. Amiable and assured — and playing some of the
hottest guitar solos of his career — Finn has clearly turned the
ghosts of his past into allies of the present.