Album nine for Melbourne brothers’ with a lengthy, gentle collection.
As a musician, it really helps if one’s parents bring you up in a musical environment and brothers Mark and Luke Finn grew up in suburban Melbourne but had a canny father. He surrounded his sons with the sounds of his Spanish guitar playing, which subsequently gave his sons a natural interest in all styles of music. And we can all name an album that crystalised our musical development – the one set of songs that gave us the grounding to learn more about the breadth of music styles we can discover. For the Finn brothers it was Eric Clapton’s ‘Unplugged’ album that cemented their musical passion and interest.
The two formed a band in 2008 and to date they have released eight albums prior to this – all of different styles, covering pop, acoustic country blues, rock and blues and mixtures thereof. So we now have album nine and it’s an eighteen-track collection of a similarly wide range of styles – but broadly relatively laid back, warming americana. As Mark Finn says – “For us, the real excitement comes from the creative process — it’s more of a never-ending passion project that’s deeply fulfilling and fun, and that’s how we approach it.”
The album opens with ‘Young Love’ and some lovely horns opening out to a gentle and engaging song of carefree love. ‘Brooklyn Girl’ starts with laid-back guitar and bass before drums kick in and another lovely tune emerges. Recent single ‘The Waterfall’ has a cheery JJ Cale feel to it and some stirring pedal steel makes this one of the strongest on the album.
There’s more pedal steel and gentle guitar playing on love song ‘Genevieve’ and ‘Bad Situation’ once again has a Clapton/JJ Cale vibe. Other single ‘Missing You’ has a catchy thumping bass line throughout and is another album highlight.
This album is a solid set – it outstays its welcome a little at a hefty eighteen-strong selection – but this has been a trend on many of their albums – very lengthy sets. A little bit of judicious editing wouldn’t go amiss – but the songs are mostly strong, albeit never wavering far from their core sound.
The album features with the brothers Josh Koop on drums and percussion; Jeremy Staples on bass; Terry Hart on guitar and backing vocals and Mike Hart on backing vocals. Definitely a band to watch out for in the future,
