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Split EnzExtravagenza Liberation I'd never quite realised until now just how good a band Split Enz actually were. Certainly, it was obvious to all and sundry that they had the sticks-in-your-head engaging-melodies market cornered, but having casually whacked this collection on as an ostensibly unchallenging backdraop to mundane house-moving tasks, I found myself increasingly distracted and absorbed in a hitherto unnoticed musical richness. Culled from shows on the band's 1993 twentieth anniversary reunion tour, this double live set percolates with uplift and celebration. It's the sound of a band with nothing to prove simply reveling in their canon. And in that spirit, it's nice to see that 'Extravagenza' is more than just a live greatest hits collection. Tim Finn's brief liner notes make it abundantly clear that, as far as he's concerned, Split Enz were primarily a live experience and many songs certainly take on a life of their own here. Strait Ol' Line mutates delightfully from campy faux jazz to heavy rock while polka workout, Best Friend, takes on a bizarre pathos. Bold As Brass sees Finn freeform rhyming and Shark Attack and I See Red are appropriately frenetic. The only real disappointment here is an oddly flaccid History Never Repeats, though it's more than balanced out by stellar renditions of Give It A Whirl and Pioneer/Six Months In A Leaky Boat. While Split Enz made a career on the Finn brothers' well-crafted songs, what this album reveals is that their ace-in-the-hole was actually keyboard player, Eddie Rayner, whose canny contributions lift those songs to another level while never getting in the way of the core melodies. In short, this record really makes me want to go out and buy lots of other Split Enz records, which seems about as high a compliment as a live album could possibly receive.  |
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