It’s 1964, 78 Teasdale Street in the small New Zealand town of Te Awamutu, and young brothers Tim and Neil Finn lie awake in their shared bedroom, talking in the darkness about music, aspirations, and everything in between. The specifics of those aspirations may be known only to Tim and Neil, but it’s hard to imagine even their wildest dreams matching what reality has brought them during the intervening 60 years, with smash-hit albums, sell-out tours, OBEs for services to music, a permanent exhibition in their hometown museum, and the fact that they’re still doing what they love all those decades later.
With the Crowded House song ‘Some Greater Plan (for Claire)’ being the most recent addition, there have been 30 Neil and Tim Finn-written songs publicly released so far, going all the way back to 1979 and the Split Enz songs ‘Give It A Whirl’ and ‘Mind Over Matter’. Both brothers have fared well when they’ve worked separately, with the massive success of Neil’s Crowded House standing above all other commercial achievements, but something truly special happens when they write and sing together. And a great deal of that is down to the exquisite harmonies that grace their collaborations.
Exposed to a lot of harmony singing around the home as they were growing up, Tim and Neil found that the ability to do the same with their own voices became second nature, and they were soon showing off their vocal chops to their family by performing their first ‘gigs’ during Christmas parties at the beach. By the time it came to songs like ‘Weather With You’, and ‘Four Seasons In One Day’ from Crowded House’s 1991 Woodface album, those voices had become so perfectly attuned that it’s difficult to figure out which brother is singing which part. Such is the irresistible nature of those harmonies that when one takes solo leads (which are in themselves beautiful), we still find ourselves longing for the bliss of their two voices together again. Such two-part harmonies aren’t exclusive to the Finn brothers, of course, and they have been used so extensively throughout the history of popular music that they are one of the most common components of pop songs. But why do harmonies like Tim’s and Neil’s evoke such reactions in us?
I was hoping that there would be no answer to this beyond ‘it’s magic’, but, rather disappointingly, there’s a musicological explanation for it. Apparently each of us is born with an inbuilt mechanism which causes us to react positively to ‘consonant’ sounds’, which provide feelings of resolution and pleasure. Consonant harmonies, then, are two or more of these sounds, achieved through combining different pitches in a chord. Yeah, I don’t quite get it, either, what is evident is that we’re pre-wired to take pleasure from harmonies, so when we hear one, it taps into something fundamental. 15th Century Italian Scholar Giannozzo Manetti said that “harmonies exalted even heaven… like angelic and divine melodies”, and despite that being ‘masterful hyperbole’, many of will have had the experience of a harmony being so beautiful and perfect that it somehow transcends everything.
What the musicologists are less certain about, however, is why the harmonies of siblings can take things to an even higher plane. Some say it’s down to shared genetics creating similar vocal timbres, others saying it’s down to familial bone structure, others still argue that it’s down to familiarity with one another, and the slightly more radical reckon there’s a kind of soundwave telepathy at play. But I for one am happy they can’t agree on a definitive explanation. In a world where so much can be rationalised, isn’t it nice to have something that remains elusive? Whatever the reason, familial vocal harmonies are joyful things. We’ve been treated to many of them over the years, beginning with Phil and Don Everly, who set the towering standard that all others had to meet, continuing through The Beach Boys, Pointer Sisters, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, The Staple Singers, The Bee Gees (and dozens of others), and arriving in the here and now with contemporary acts like First Aid Kit. Tim and Neil Finn are up there with the very best. So go and take a listen to ‘Disembodied Voices’, the 2004 Finn Brothers song which revisits that sleepless night in Te Awamutu, and let those harmonies give you a little taste of the divine. Then listen to everything else they’ve done together, finish, and listen again. Trust me: your inbuilt mechanism for loving harmonies will be grateful.
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The current single from Crowded House is ‘The Howl’ taken from their album Gravity Stairs
Crowded House are touring the UK in October 2024:
Co-op Live, Manchester
Tuesday 8 October 2024
OVO Hydro, Glasgow
Wednesday 9 October 2024
The O2, London
Friday 11 October 2024
Brighton Centre
Saturday 12 October 2024
3Arena, Dublin
Monday 14 October 2024
Bournemouth International Centre
Wednesday 16 October 2024
Utilita Arena Birmingham
Thursday 17 October 2024
Article by Glenn Fosbraey
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