Liam Finn – Spiraling: 13th Floor – New Song of the Day

Liam Finn has released the 3rd single, Spiral-shaped, of his upcoming Hyperverse Solo project.

Here is the blurb with further information:

Conceived, written and recorded entirely via live stream, Spiral sounds like a freight train heading full speed towards an abandoned bridge. It screams with youthful power, energy and passion. Psychedelic synths and elfinly sweet female vocals balance its relentless, hypnotic drive to an explosive end. It is post-punk with a feminist twist in the tradition of Idles and Viagra Boys.

Finn quotes “Spiral is a song about coping mechanisms and the way we all deal with fears differently. Screaming helps”

Liam Finn has always forged his own path. From the youthful guitar fireworks of his band Betchadupa to his explosive one-man shows (including appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman and Later… With Jools Holland), he has found ways to challenge and disrupt expectations of a singer-songwriter.

His latest project Hyperverse With “The 40 Fingers” he is once again breaking new ground. He involves his fans in the writing and recording process in an unprecedented way and has even more ambitious plans to bridge the gap between artist and audience in the long term.

Betchadupa emerged in Aotearoa New Zealand thanks to renowned local label Flying Nun, accompanied by oodles of indie cred. The band split around 2006 (though there was a one-off single in 2020), with Finn’s solo debut I will be a lightning was released in 2007 and received critical acclaim.

His vision was immediately clear: he controlled most of the instruments himself and acted as producer, as he would do on subsequent recordings. FOMO And The Nihilist.

To support his debut, he began solo performances where he used loop pedals to trigger guitar parts that he could then sing along to or accompany himself on drums. An early adopter of this performance method, he set the bar incredibly high with explosive shows that were part rock ‘n’ roll, part magic trick.

Since then, there have been side projects such as BARB, in which Connan Mockasin participated and James Milne by Lawrence Arabia and Finn’s soundtrack work for the 2017 documentary Susanne Bartsch: On Top.

After 25 years of performing together with his father Neil Finn and Crowded House, Liam and Neil released their first album together Light sleepers in 2018. This led to Liam and his brother Elroy officially joining Full house as core members and co-authors, the publication Dreamers wait in 2021 and has toured extensively over the past few years. Plus, new Crowded House music is on the way and a global world tour is planned for 2024.

Finn has lived in America for twelve years and still has strong ties to the country he grew up in. It was a show in Auckland, New Zealand that reminded him of the joy of playing solo with his loop pedal. “That reignited my fire,” he says, “it made me realise there’s something about that energy that you can never really capture in a studio because you’re not on adrenaline, you’re focused, whereas on stage you’re trying to entertain and you only have one chance to give it your all.” So Hyperverse The project was born, broadcasting the making of Finn’s new album via Twitch as he improvised, wrote and bottled inspiration live for an online audience. The creative process was fully visible from the start in a studio in Auckland, through the move to his father Neil’s Roundhead Studios and finally to his home studio in LA.

“I wanted to see what would happen if I let people watch something that is normally incredibly lonely and intimate,” he says. Twitch’s chat feature provided an added bonus, as it allowed fans to provide feedback. Finn says the process felt like having a list of “faceless, ageless, genderless producers.”

The result is a collection that bursts with innovation, harnessing the energy of these highly dramatic studio sessions and distilling the results into impeccably crafted guitar pop gems.

Finn, who served as mixer and producer every step of the way, says it gave him courage not to have to answer to anyone: “I just thought, I want to go through with this and make it sound exactly the way I imagined it.”

He describes Hyperverse as “A compilation of almost everything I’ve ever done as a musician.”

It is the most comprehensive portrait of an artist imaginable, and its creator describes the album as “a journey.”

First single I just want you to be so happy pairs combative guitar sounds with a remarkable, nimble vocal melody and builds to a cathartic climax of ecstatic chords and passionate drum sounds.

Finn says: “Every now and then you write a song that just turns out well, even with lyrics and everything, without much effort. Pretty much the whole I just want you to be so happy came out in 10 minutes.”

The album has been in preparation for years, as have the plans for it. Finn says mysteriously: “I’m directing this project towards a new idea for releasing music.”

What’s most striking is the creative momentum that comes from being open about the process and involving fans from the beginning. Finn can now look back on his career with some distance, but also acknowledge that not much has changed.

“It feels like a record for my teenage self. I think about how I actually feel the same way I have since I was a teenager. But with a certain wisdom, I guess.”

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