NZ Music Month

‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ is held up as some kind of high-water mark for guitar pop, a song whose lyrical and melodic grace serves as an instructional manual for all who might toy with the form.

That is true, to only a slightly lesser extent, for its author too. Neil Finn, the story goes, is a man who writes songs for the true believers, who is ineffably conventional while making one understand precisely why those conventions exist. 

For more than 30 years his high, keening voice and effortless hooks have endured, since Crowded House at least – an immovable object in an ever-changing musical landscape. 

But he’s in his mid-50s now, and lately has been quietly but firmly rejecting that vision. First there was Pajama Club, his collaboration with wife Sharon and Sean Donnelly (aka SJD), which featured the Finns on instruments with which they were only vaguely familiar, influenced by the agitated amateur funk of New York all-female quintet ESG. Now comes a new album named Dizzy Heights, produced by Dave Fridmann, most famous for his work with Ohio LSD enthusiasts the Flaming Lips. It’s the most remarkable, unexpected record of Finn’s career, and it came from battling his most praised instincts.

“I’ve got to fight against becoming tasteful,” he says. “My natural tendency would be to polish and scrub up – and I can admire some music that’s tastefully made – but I’m just really worried about that becoming the predominant process as you get older.”

He is getting older, but remains boyish in dress (skinny black jeans, an untucked micro-print shirt); media (Twitter and the Civilian satire site); the demeanour (curious, open, enthusiastic).

Perhaps part of what keeps him young are his two sons, Liam and Elroy, both accomplished musicians who play on his new album. And while Liam – the elder and more successful – has long tired of questions and observations about his father’s influence on his sound, Neil is quite happy, even flattered, to have Liam’s influence on his own noted. “I hope that we’re informing each other a little bit, over the years,” he says.

DIZZY HEIGHTS is certainly a new Neil, his melodies peeking out underneath a blanket of Fridmann’s famous buzz and rush. Collaborators, including SJD and Connan Mockasin, have brought a freshness and invigorating angularity to his sound. He’s excited about watching it go out into the world, subverting expectations and angering some of his more purist fans while delighting others. “A little perversity is encouraged or even welcomed by people who follow my career,” he says, happy to have brought that sometimes-obscured side of his personality to the fore.

Amongst the album’s most entertaining and provocative songs is “Recluse”, ostensibly about friends of his who hibernate for months on end, shutting out the world in favour of quality time with TV shows like Game of Thrones. In fact, Finn is something of a recluse himself, and it’s easy to read the song as an introspective rumination on why our brightest star – at least until Lorde came along – remains a phantom, barely visible presence in his hometown.

“It’s not my natural habitat,” he says of the limelight. “Even the amount of attention we [Crowded House] got, which was comparatively modest, took me a little while to get used to.”

Finn is rarely sighted around the local industry, whereas other prominent songwriters pop up at every charity concert, award show or winery tour. He bristles good-naturedly when I disdainfully mention the latter: “I’ve done a winery tour! But I am a bit worried about them.”

I MEET HIM on a Thursday afternoon at his own Roundhead Studios, a former Friendly Society lodge in Newton on the outskirts of central Auckland. It’s a grand old warren of a building, a characteristic which seems to please Finn, and one he has helped accentuate. Roundhead has recorded everyone from stars like Kanye West and Radiohead to the decidedly less lauded Kim Dotcom, who laid down his recently released debut album there. Many in music would view Roundhead’s hosting the German as tantamount to having a terrorist in for tea, but Finn, an industry cynic who is self-releasing Dizzy Heights, saw the big German as just another customer.

“I found him to be quite charming in the flesh, and really smart,” he says. ‘’Not the caricature he was painted.”

We speak in a vast, high-stud room with only the fading remnants of natural light filtering through curtains, and accompanied by the comforting creak of an aged ceiling fan. Amongst the clutter of instruments and mixing desks is a double bed, which seems strange, as living quarters are a few steps away. But this began as a writing room, before evolving into a full recording studio and creative hub. A bed is one more excuse not to vacate it.

Finn loves spending time in his studio, following his evolving creative urges, and announces, offhandedly, his intention to hibernate more deliberately in the near future. “I’m probably going to have a break from touring for a while, after this tour, so I can cement some gains I’ve made in record-making, and film as well. Just be able to hunker down and pump out some stuff,” he says.

It’s as if he’s finally realised that those incandescent songs he released with Split Enz and then Crowded House through the 80s and 90s will keep him and his family in comfort as long as they shall live. So instead of following that endless – and, for Finn, increasingly disorienting – tour-record-tour-record cycle, he will instead focus on ensuring all that’s in him gets out.

“There is a sense of urgency these days – the passing of years, too much to do,” he says. “Got to fit it all in.”