Split Enz – True Colours

Wow! What a killer of an album! Enchanting melodies, refined twists, masterful singing and instrumentation! The Beatles, revived in 1980, couldn't have made it better! The extremely unusual way this album was presented - the laser-etched vinyl (I*m still astonished that it doesn't affect the playing in the slightest!) and the different cover-colours - is adequate and adds to the excitement! You should have at least ONE variation of this gem in your collection!

Back home in New Zealan, and Australia, I'm sure Split Enz are YUGE, and agreed upon by all as THE seminal Kiwi pop act, everywhere else they’d be considered a cult band. Formed in 1972, the group was started by Tim Finn and Phil Judd and were, at first, an all acoustic ensemble. Their sound incorporated a whimsical Beatles-influenced skiffle pop sensibility along with an often frantically complex song structure and twitchy vocals. They could be described as “music hall meets prog rock meets a circus act” although this is only kinda/sorta in the ballpark. The music of early Split Enz was uniquely unique.

No other band looked like they did either, not even during the glam rock era, with their angular clothes and makeup inspired by German Expressionist cinema and Surrealis, to say Split Enz stood out would be an understatement. Here was a band that looked as weird, or weirder than even Alice Cooper, Sparks or The New York Dolls. Their seriously oddball art-directed look during the earlier phase of their career predated Klaus Nomi’s similar getup by several years. The same can be said for how their shtick comes a few years prior to Richard and Danny Elfman’s similar-ish Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. These guys were doing something incredibly odd forty plus years ago; and incredibly forward-looking, too.

They never really were “in style” save for a few years where a toned down Split Enz reached worldwide cult status during the “New Wave” era, first with their immortal hit “I Got You” and then with songs like “Six Months In A Leaky Boat,” “History Never Repeats” and the albums True Colours, Waiata and Time & Tide. After the end of the Enz, Neil Finn would go on to form the even more successful Crowded House. From time to time there’s a Split Enz reunion, though without the antics.

I’ve got the etched vinyl album, though I have to it that today, looking at the jacket, I can’t a single song, it was all laced with so much hype, coming out during a time when no one was sure of the course of modern music, where I’m just glad music got back on its feet and I wasn’t relegated to listening to this sort of themed exuberance with youthful alienation forever. All and all, it’s not a comfortable album, where not having it around is like a breath of fresh air, though in 1980, along with cocaine, it was simply everywhere, and couldn’t disappear quickly enough.

Review by Jenell Kesler