Finns demonstrate sibling revelry
The Finn Brothers/Martin Sexton/Angela McCluskey
FleetBoston Pavilion, Boston, Massachusetts
July 31, 2004
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in The Boston Globe, August 7, 2004
Sometimes even background music can reveal great truths. So it was
at Saturday
night’s Finn Brothers show at the FleetBoston Pavilion, when the P.A.
system
blasted the greatest hits of the Fixx between opening acts. With its
nervous
New Wave energy, unshakeable catchiness and ultimate disposability, it
seemed
to say, “There but for the grace of God go Neil and Tim Finn.”
Split Enz might very well have become early ’80s curios themselves, but
through some combination of talent, historical importance (they’re
revered
in New Zealand as that country’s first major rock band on the world
stage),
perseverance and pure luck, the Finns successfully avoided that fate.
Fully
half the songs on Saturday came appropriately enough from the two
albums
credited to the Finn Brothers, including seven from the upcoming Everyone
Is Here (released August 24 on Nettwerk).
The evening revolved around fraternal collaboration, with “Angel’s
Heap” and the opening “Weather With You” featuring the brothers singing
together in place of a single lead vocal, while the new “A Life Between
Us” was a soulful
shuffle with traded verses. The set list avoided anything the Finns
didn’t
record together. That effectively leveled the playing field, preventing
Neil’s
audience-pleasing Crowded House material from overshadowing Tim’s
lesser-known
solo gems like “Persuasion.”
The audience warmed to the new material quickly, rising to their feet
at the end of “Won’t Give In.” They went craziest for the Split Enz and
Crowded House material, though, especially during Neil’s guitar solos
over the extended codas for “Six Months In A Leaky Boat” and “It’s Only
Natural.” For his part, Tim added a touch of Split Enz’s theatricality
to “Dirty Creature,” which at one point saw him doing part of a Maori
haka.
Their brotherly dynamic was also apparent between songs. They
occasionally completed each other’s stories, and older brother Tim even
admonished Neil with a sharp but good-natured “Hold on! Capo!,” when
Neil began playing “I Got You” in the wrong key. The closing “Better Be
Home Soon,” from Crowded House’s Tim-free Temple Of Low Men,
finally broke the jointly-owned material rule, but the audience was too
busy singing along to the final chorus for it to matter much.
Martin Sexton may have nominally been an opening act, but with a
75-minute set capped by two encores, he certainly wasn’t treated like
one by the crowd. Armed only with an acoustic guitar, Sexton’s voice
and persona suggested a
less aggressive Jack Black reborn as a singer-songwriter. He quoted
other people’s songs seemingly at random, beatboxed while using his
guitar like a drum machine and vocalized into a heavily distorted
microphone to approximate the sound of a guitar solo.
Opener Angela McCluskey’s Macy-Gray-meets-Marianne-Faithfull voice and
slightly loopy but endearing stage presence won the sparse early
audience over to her
rootsy pop. After one song finished, someone yelled out, “Hey, lady,
that
was all right!,” and most of the assembled crowd seemed to agree.