Liam Finn

Kaleidoscopic pop from an
Antipodean one-man band
Unlike many celebrity spawn,
24-year-old Liam Finn is
actually quite comfortable
discussing his famous father,
former Split Enz and current
Crowded House tunesmith
Neil Finn. “I’m proud of him,” says the

Photographed for Spin in

Wellington, New Zealand,

February 7, 2008

scraggly-bearded New Zealander, relaxing
after a packed show at the Los Angeles
club Spaceland.
But that pride does have its limits. “I
did an interview with this reporter in San
Francisco, and his first question was, ‘So,
what was it like growing up in a house
with a genius? Was it a crowded house?’”
he recalls, sighing. “And for the next 20
minutes, ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ was all
he wanted to talk about. I felt like going,
‘ This interview is over.’”
Just old enough to shave when he
played drums and guitar on his father’s
first solo outing, 1998’s Try Whistling This,
the multi-instrumentalist chose to write,
perform, and record his remarkable solo
debut album of bittersweet indie pop,
I’ll Be Lightning (Yep Roc), almost entirely
by himself. And that’s the way he likes it.
Eschewing the usual army of Pro Tools
experts and sound engineers, Finn set
out to create a record of his own raw first
takes. “My favorite bit of each song is the
bit that makes most bands or engineers
go, ‘Ooh, we should fix that’ or ‘That’s a
fuck-up,’” he says.
Mixing his childhood fascination with
the Beatles and Neil Young with his
adolescent love of alt rockers like Nirvana
and Pavement, he created a uniquely
postmodern record full of striking
contrasts: pastoral acoustic guitars and
rugged electronic beats, soft melodies
and spastic rhythms, big choruses and
pipsqueaky noise. Full of time-shifted
instrumental loops and wiggy samples,
songs like “Second Chance” would appear
tough to pull off live. But as anyone
who’s witnessed a Finn gig knows, he
does so with ease—and more impressively,

FAST FACTS

> Finn recorded much

of Lightning on a Neve

console that was built for

Pete Townshend. “When

you turn it on,” he says,

“the dial reads ‘666.’”

> Neil Finn wrote the

1983 Split Enz song

“Our Day” about Liam’s

impending arrival.

alone—looping his guitar riffs,
detuning others into bass tracks, and
then leaping onto the drum kit for
pummeling finales, looking every
bit the antithesis of his well-groomed,
well-mannered dad.
There’s no mistaking that keening,
high alto, though, which sounds strik-
ingly, eerily like Neil’s.
“Well,” says Finn, cracking a smile, “I’ll
take that as a compliment.”

B Y LIAM GOWING
PHOTOGRAPH B Y PHILLIP SIMPSON