The Finn Brothers, Mercury Rev@ Sydney Opera House, 12/07/05

Thu 14th Jul, 2005 in Gig Reviews

It’s a given that tears are going to well up at some point during a Finn gig – whether from the sheer beauty of some of the songs, the memory of a love, or from uncontrollable giggling as banter goes off into some in-joke that will stick in your head (new shoes! new shoes!).

Tonight, you expected you’d be dabbing your eyes as accidental or deliberate memories of Paul Hester were invoked. But even the hardest cynics probably didn’t dream of singing an unaccompanied, unamplified Four Seasons In One Day. For a moment you are part of a fond wake. And sure, they might even try the same trick the next night, but there is something in their sincerity that gets you past whatever contrivance.

Then there’s the ‘interesting’ choice of the beautifully contrived Mercury Rev as opening act. You watch some elements of the audience blanch as Jonathan Donahue whirls about the stage – somewhere along a line between, say, Died Pretty’s Ron Peno and Placebo’s Brian Molko. One moment demented conductor, finishing every song with a sweeping bow complete with Liberace-cheesy grin, as he waits for the (often deserved) applause. To swirling backdrops of frolicking dolphins and life-affirming quotes from sources as diverse as mathematician Max Planck, Sylvia Plath, and the Hallmark greeting card company, their music is one moment glacially graceful, before Grasshopper (yes, Grasshopper…) and/or Donahue lose themselves in spirals of guitar. They leave to polarised acclaim.

The seats have filled after an interval spent (and we do mean ‘spent’...) paying for the privilege of drinking in such iconic surrounds. The Finns walk into a room of friends celebrating their familiarity. Straight away, it’s into a grab-bag of thirty years of music we know – and some we don’t. From the comfort of family anthems of their latest duo project, Everyone Is Here, which fit well with their individual and collective canons, they slip into Bold As Brass. An Enz oddity from their clown-faced 70’s days on the subject of masturbation. If only some of this audience knew…

Going with the music of in Tim and Neil’s shared album, the band is maybe a little more intimate than some of more expansive combos Neil has surrounded himself with over the last few years. The English Stacey brothers double the sibling quota onstage, typically multi-instrumental – Jeremy on some drums and keyboards, Paul on some guitar and keyboards, and even (for our sins…) banjo. And a nice line in Shakespeare, as Neil ‘pushes him into thespianism’ for an excerpt from Henry V. Baby-faced American Tim Smith might only play bass, but does so very well.

Another joy is the way the Finns flip from the glib to the touching, from song to song. There Goes God to Weather With You. The dark is, at one point, literal: the verge-of-sleep conversation of Disembodied Voices comes from a blacked-out stage. You’re almost in their shared bedroom. The lights come back, and Tim is again a stylish man in his ‘50’s, grey hair flapping, eccentric dancing (complete with occasional pelvic thrust…), and Neil is somehow still the younger brother looking at him with a strange mix of awe and embarrassment.

But after you’ve laughed, danced in your seat, cringed at some bad jokes, and maybe even surprised yourself with how many of their words and tunes have stuck in your head, it ends with a Gentle Hum, and the feeling they have shared something of themselves with you.