Liam Finn could rightly be identified as a world citizen. The New Zealand native was a globetrotting toddler, accompanying father Neil Finn on Crowded House tours, repeating the experience as a young adult with his own band, the renowned Betchadupa. To record FOMO, the sophomore follow-up to 2007 solo debut I’ll Be Lightning, Finn relocated to London, but moved to New York City three years ago. Finn’s third solo set, The Nihilist, runs the gamut of his genetic and experiential influences. Finn will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on him.
Finn: When I first started walking around Greenpoint, I immediately noticed the drip portraits on the pavement. They seemed to be all over the place, and most looked like a portrait of the same bow-tied man. I started making my bike route to the studio following a path of my favorite ones. Toward the end of making my record, I wondered how hard it would be to track down whoever did these masterpieces. They had been a big part of my year, and I found myself imagining this interesting character wandering at night, making these beautiful drips of black tarry paint. It turned out to be pretty easy to find him. Painter and street artist Paul Richard had a simple website with a contact email, so I sent him a song and wrote asking if he ever did commission work. He invited me to his studio, which freakishly was in the same building of lofty studios that I had written most of my album in over the summer. His room was directly above the room I rented. As you could imagine I was pretty buzzed out, bro. It was there that I saw some of his other works, some huge canvas paintings of himself and his dog that were really stunning. He immortalized me on the corner of the street where I recorded The Nihilist at the end of last year. If you play my record backward you can hear the co-ordinates of where to find said piece.
