New York – New Zealand-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Liam Finn is pleased to unveil his Live Rooftop Session, which premiered on Vevo today and features live versions of eight tracks performed on the rooftop of The End Studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
For the session, Finn gathered his Dream Team band, which includes long-time collaborators EJ Barnes, Connan Mockasin, and Kirin J Callinan. The session spotlights songs from Finn’s latest album, The Nihilist (recorded at The End) and also includes a cover of the Prince classic “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Liam Finn’s Rooftop Session – Tracklisting:
1. Ocean Emmanuelle
2. The Nihilist
3. Snug As Fuck
4. Nothing Compares 2 U featuring Connan Mockasin and Joe McGinty
5. Filter In My Mouth
6. 4 Track Stomper
7. Miracle Glance
8. Burn Up The Road
Liam Finn’s 2014 Fall Tour w/ The Helio Sequence
8/15 – The Casbah – San Diego, CA
8/16 – The Roxy Theatre – Los Angeles, CA
8/17 – The Cellar Door – Visalia, CA
8/18 – Witch Room – Sacramento, CA
8/19 – The Chapel – San Francisco, CA
8/20 – W.O.W. Hall – Eugene, OR
8/22 – White Eagle – Portland, OR
8/23 – Tractor Tavern – Seattle, WA
The Nihilist, Liam’s third solo record, pushes his songwriting and arrangements into more refined and mature dimensions, a notion he attributes as much to geography as anything. Finn found a studio space not far from his new home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with windows overlooking the Manhattan skyline. “As soon as I found my own space to bunker down, the songs started taking shape,” he says. “There was a surreal feeling created through the energy of where I was and looking over at Manhattan and seeing it as a subconscious dimension, an entity in itself where every story under the sun was happening all at once. Any fantasy or fear you have in your own mind is probably playing out in reality in Manhattan at any one time.”
The album opens with “Ocean Emmanuelle,” a dreamy, collaborative effort with Mulholland that sets a tone of troubled beauty. “Snug As Fuck,” a melodic and fantastical duet with frequent collaborator Barnes, bridges the gap between Finn’s work as a teenager in the acclaimed New Zealand band Betchadupa and his current solo career, while “Burn Up The Road” is an infectious fuzzed up rocker. “4 Track Stomper” builds a distorted beat on an old four-track tape recorder into an off-kilter masterpiece, and the album’s eerie, percussive title track was actually born as an a capella arrangement during a jam with Elroy.
“There’s quite a groovy, irreverent swagger to it,” Liam says, “but there’s always this slight element of unhinged tension.”
It’s a fitting description for the record as a whole, which, much like the city that captured Finn’s imagination as he watched from across the river, balances moments of triumph and anxiety as he channels its countless characters’ inner workings through his own musical prism to reveal his finest, most sophisticated work yet.
