19-7-2005 - The Finn Brothers...

A blurry photo of the Finns onstage

Or - why you probably shouldn't go to concerts with the flu and a fever of around a jillion degrees.

I really wish I hadn't been sick for this one, my first viewing of the Finns in the flesh. They've long been singer/songwriter heroes of mine, up there with the Beatles and Pink Floyd, so no Upper Respiritory Tract Infection was going to stop me seeing them!

We arrived a little late, part of the way into the support act, Mercury Rev. Didn't think much of them beforehand, to be honest, their songs always struck me as banal, self-indulgent, pompous and, in the end, desperately dull. But I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt; after all, I wasn't too enthused about seeing Placebo due to their recordings, but their live show, to put it in the young and hip lingo of a couple of generations away from me, rawked. So we walked in, took our seats (and great seats they were, too, probably ten rows back from the stage and the first elevated row, so the view was superb) and caught most of Mercury Rev's set.

Well, what can I say? The kindest thing to say is, they were musically tight. The songs were well performed, and the movies they had on behind them were occasionally quite interesting. But they were... well, banal, self-indulgent, pompous and, in the end, desperately dull, striking me as a bunch of guys who'd seen half a documentary about string theory, read Chicken Soup for the Soul, and heard from a friend about "What the Bleep Do We Know". With a ridiculously earnest delivery of incredibly shallow-trying-to-be-deep lyrics, over-expressive body language, and ending every song with a profound yet twee quote on th big screen behind them, it came across as a rock concert mixed with an Anthony Robbins seminar. I was trying not to laugh, but I didn't entirely succeed. Luckily I still had a bad cough from the flu I'm still fighting, so I could easily cough the word "tossers" out loud and no-one realised. It made me feel so much better.

The Finns, on the other hand, were fabulous. I'd heard that they'd gotten slow and boring (and not a word from benpeek, who believes they started that way!), and their latest album really reinforced this. "Everyone is Here" is a very, very boring album, completely lacking the energy and rawness of their previous brotherly effort, which I love. But from the moment they came out, they owned the stage, running around like schoolboys, playing a mix of old and new (leaning more heavily toward the new than I'd have liked, though, which really showed the material's weaknesses).

Highlights:

• Tim singing "Persuasion", one of his solo songs. His voice is still there.
  
• Neil singing... well, just about anything. His voice is simply amazing.
  
• Anything where Neil played lead guitar. He doesn't do it often enough.
  
• Tim singing "Time for a Change", an old Split Enz classic, not one of the popular singles.
  
• Neil getting the audience to sing "Four Seasons in One Day", dedicating it to Paul Hester.
  
• Absolute highlight, and it came early in the show - a brilliant rendition of "World Where You Live", which ended with just Neil on piano playing and singing softly, and again getting the audience to sing along. His voice, the emotion that he infused the song with, the pure simplicity of it... I doubt there was a dry eye in the house.

I won't mention the pounding fevered headache I had by the time we left the theatre, that'd be ending on a down note. Nor will I mention the parking lot nightmare, in which I eventually had to drive over a curb and footpath to escape. Let's just say - excellent, excellent concert, lots of audience interaction and participation (again, unlike Mercury Rev, who barely acknowledged we were there, so busy were they masturbating over their instruments), and I'd love to see them again next time they hit town. Hopefully without a fever this time.