Whistling While He Works

07/30/1998 9:00 PM, LAUNCH
Lesley Holdom

Breaking up his former band Crowded House has turned out to be an excellent decision for New Zealander Neil Finn. He's happy being on his own, feels good about his solo career and genuinely likes his new album, Try Whistling This (Work Group). And what's not to like?--this one showcases his lush vocals against excellent pop fare, but with more texture and melancholy than we'd usually expect from Finn.

Finn re-inspired himself to create music by--of all things--taking up painting. After his last record with his brother and former Split Enz/ Crowded House partner Tim, Finn felt a bit burned-out on the whole music thing--until he picked up a paintbrush. "The painting was just part of the process of getting away from music for a while with a friend of mine. We went to the beach and painted, and it was cool because I cleared my head and embarked on something which was creative but had no agenda. It wasn't career-based, and I wasn't even very good at it, really. But it just meant that I was able to quit thinking about music for a couple weeks, and in the course of that I did some playing for the fun of it. A few things for this album started to emerge from that."

So will we be seeing Neil Finn art shows in the future? Laughs Finn, "No, those paintings that I didn't destroy are hanging in my hallway, and that's where they'll remain. My paintings are good but they're certainly not great, and I think there's enough average art out there without me contributing to it."

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of Try Whistling This is that it sounds like Finn had a lot of fun making it. He admits to this, explaining, "I was able to work at home in New Zealand for most of it. And the album was done in different stages, so the whole process was sort of a big adventure. Jim Moginie from Midnight Oil and I had a week at the beach and just wrote and jammed, and that was really good. Marius DeVries came down for two weeks from London, and we set up at his computer and just made a whole lot of sketches and little vignettes. And Tchad Blake came down and joined in the proceedings for a while--it was a whole big chunk of time and a lot of different things happened."

And so, Finn isn't a bit wistful about breaking up Crowded House. He reveals, "It was tough getting to the point where I decided to do it, but once I did, I felt resolved and I felt quite good about it. It was the right thing to do." Will the Finn Brothers ever work together again? Finn says yes. "I'm sure we're going to make another record together in the next couple of years. We really enjoyed the last one we did. It'll probably not be the next record I make, but the one after."