She Will Have Her Way: The Songs of Tim & Neil Finn

What do Amazon.com customers think?

Friends of Finn enz and house buy this

The idea that one can completely transform a song by changing the gender of the performer is not novel. That so many that love the Finn Brothers can add their musical notions and come out the other side is not surprising considering the source material. The only thing missing from this compilation would have been renditions by Lisa Germano, Bic Runga and Sheryl Crow, and other woman artists who have performed with Neil, or Tim or the the bands.

Dave

Written by David Hirsh "David Hirsh"

A Lost Opportunity

I was disappointed by "She Will Have Her Way: The Songs of Tim & Neil Finn." It's cool to have Tim & Neil stuff covered in principle, but the remake artists don't seem to "get" the original songs. For example, Renee Geyer turned Neil's "Into Temptation"-a deeply personal confession full of fear and overwhelming desire-into an overproduced R&B club number that feels like temptation is a simple matter of justifying a guilty pleasure. This is fine and valid as a concept and all, except when applied…

I was disappointed by "She Will Have Her Way: The Songs of Tim & Neil Finn." It's cool to have Tim & Neil stuff covered in principle, but the remake artists don't seem to "get" the original songs. For example, Renee Geyer turned Neil's "Into Temptation"-a deeply personal confession full of fear and overwhelming desire-into an overproduced R&B club number that feels like temptation is a simple matter of justifying a guilty pleasure. This is fine and valid as a concept and all, except when applied to Neil's lyrics. How can you scratch and croon the lyrics "straight into the arms of Hell"? And having the backup chorus kind of undoes the sense that it's a deeply personal issue. Anyway, it misses the point of the song and robs it of all of its power. (Oh, and it would have been COOL if she had gone for the gusto and actually remade it as a full on Southern Baptist gospel number, but missed the boat on that one.)

Several of the tracks, like Little Birdy's guitary "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" Missy Higgins' earnest "Stuff and Nonsense", and Sara Storer's accented "Won't Give In" are competent and charming, but do nothing to make the music their own. Even when well handled, I think I'd rather just hear the originals. And since Finn fans are presumably the target audience here, I think they might as well.

Perhaps the most grievous misuse of the music comes when Brooke Fraser, admirably carrying a mostly-acoustic version of "Distant Sun" to its climax, simply OMITS the lines "Like a Christian/Fearing vengeance from above," letting the band continue along without her for the two measures. The absence of lyrics (and the rhyme) is distracting and glaring. It becomes the entire focus of the song. The absence of those particular lyrics reads like some stupid protest by omission. This is the place to celebrate the brother's music, to reconsider it, not to protest it. What makes it worse is that it's otherwise one of the best tracks on the album, but you can't get past that giant hole she cut in the center.

Between these misunderstandings, protests, and simple rerecordings, I find myself returning to the originals instead.

Read the full review

Written by Chris Noessel "nomothete"

Track listing Edit

CD

format:
number:
title:

number

name

artist

hh:mm:ss

1

Fall at Your Feet

Clare Bowditch