Liam Finn Talks Champagne in Seashells EP, Opening Himself Up to Collaboration Again

Liam Finn calls his beard “well-traveled” for a good reason. Over the past year alone, the troubadour performed over 180 times at venues far from his New Zealand abode, opening for The Black Keys, Pearl Jam and Wilco. “Getting the opportunity to play at beautiful legendary venues like Massey Hall in Toronto, or the Ryman in Nashville is really amazing,” Finn told Paste, adding that he also enjoyed visiting the United States during its presidential election hoopla.

Yet Finn's most impressive venture to date has not been to any geographical location, but past the barriers of a comfort zone. Although he considered his former Betchadupa bandmates his closest friends, Finn kept to himself the songs he had written of heartbreak and evictions, ultimately the reason why 2008's I'll Be Lightning became a solo record. But Finn has since opened up to a born-again collaborator, with his involvement in father Neil's 7 Worlds Collide project and an EP he created with fellow folk vocalist Eliza-Jane Barnes.

A childhood friend, Barnes had even stayed in Finn's London residence as he recorded I'll Be Lightning in New Zealand. But even with such closeness, Finn admits he had never heard her sing before, until one night, when he opened for Barnes' band, Lawrence Arabia, and heard her voice chime in. “I saw [Eliza-Jane] sitting on a couch, side stage with her legs up, a glass of whiskey in one hand and the mic in the other,” he says. “I thought, 'We'd make a good band.'”

What they created, recently released on Sept. 1, was Champagne in Seashells. Fresh from working on 7 Worlds Collide in April, Finn called forth new anxieties that coalesce in the EP's first track, "Plane Crash." A self-created nightmare in slow motion, the song spends more than half of its time building up tension through a rumble of broken chords, before exploding into a storm cloud of guitar noise.

But Champagne also harks back to memories Finn was once afraid to share. "After our last couple years of touring there's been so much to gather upon," Finn says. "But naturally I do seem to find myself writing melancholic songs about girls, no truths barred."

"On Your Side" is one of those songs, and thanks to Barnes, becomes the EP's most honest offering. A true collaboration, the two had also written it so that Barnes' voice, not Finn's, is the first voice to ring: "You make me wonder if I'm sane, gazing at your suitcase, in which you hold your life." And, as Barnes' voice continues to carry the mournful ballad for more than a third of the way through, it also becomes the greatest sign that Finn's travels have paid off.

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