No crowding him out

IN MANY WAYS, LIAM FINN HAS had it easy. After all, his dad is Neil Finn, front man with Crowded House, and so he had the proverbial head start, growing up in a liberal household with artsy parents, playing in his old man's band, and touring as support to both Crowded House and Finn Sr's pal Eddie Vedder. But it hasn't all been plain sailing.

"I had some pretty miserable times," he admits of a period spent living in London's East End, where he wrote the bulk of the material for the album. "So it's got that melancholic, introspective side to it, but hopefully it's not too depressing. I didn't feel sorry for myself."

With his mellifluous vocals, raggedy Beatles melodies and penchant for handling most of the instrumental duties himself, Finn is most often compared to Elliot Smith, the American singer-songwriter who committed suicide in 2003. So is he Smith minus the self-loathing and torment? He is somewhat affronted by this.

"He's definitely a big influence," he says. "But part of what I love about him is the torture, so hopefully I'm not like Elliot Smith minus my favourite part." The songs also bring to mind what Kurt Cobain might have sounded like had all that rage been focused towards the creation of succinct, melodic pop. "That's a big call," says Finn, taken aback. "Songwriters don't think, 'I'm like this guy if he hadn't killed himself.' I just try and write good songs." There are hints in his music of the dark urges that produced them, while one lyric references alcoholic excess. How far would Finn push himself for his art? "I never think, 'I'm going to f*** myself up,'" he replies. "That would be pretty contrived. It's important to be genuine." He does agree, however, that I'll Be Lightning is a classic break-up record in the tradition of Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. "Yeah, it's a pretty intimate record. They're all honest songs."

Yet if the happy-sad music on I'll Be Lightning was written in rain-lashed London while Finn wrestled with the disintegration of his love life and band – who, quite a noise on the post-grunge circuit, had recorded two albums and toured with Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age – it was recorded at the height of summer at his father's Roundhead Studios in Auckland. "I had an awesome time on the beach, meeting new friends and stuff," he says.

But if meeting people is easy for Finn, the intricacies of the recording process are what really consume him. I'll Be Lightning has the loose, DIY, homespun feel of Paul McCartney's 1970 debut solo album, and there's a good reason for that – Finn did virtually everything on it, including the weird sound effects between songs, the result of messing about with gadgets and guitars. "It's pretty much just me on guitar, drums, bass, keyboards and random other knick-knacks," he says. He also produced and engineered it himself, darting from console to effects pedals to drums with monomaniacal glee. He even handled the artwork and took the photographs for the album cover. "I guess I'm a control freak," he says.

With someone like Rufus Wainwright outstripping his father critically and commercially, and subsequent talk of father-son rivalry, does Finn sense envy from his dad? "Not at all. He's always been very supportive and loves this record, which means a lot. Sometimes you want to impress your parents, and other times you want to rebel and piss them off. A good amount of healthy competition can be good, if that means kicking a family member up the arse to make them step up to the bar." For Finn, it works both ways. "I love what he does and I guess that's what makes me strive to make really good music."

Finn, still only 24, recorded his debut solo album, I'll Be Lightning, at the start of last year, following the simultaneous break-up of his band Betchadupa and a split with this long-term girlfriend.

Growing up, he wasn't surrounded by musicians – just what he calls "normal dudes and dudettes". With rock-star parents, did he suffer from reverse rebel syndrome and pine for a "normal" life? "Well, for a long time I was convinced I was going to make it into the NBA – I was really into basketball. Then, when I was about 14, I stopped growing and discovered guitars and girls. But yeah, it's hard to rebel when you've got cool parents. I did have a slightly rebellious phase as a teenager where I found it harder to talk to people, but it's not like I was going to 'go straight' and become an accountant. It looked like too much fun being a musician. So I left school as soon as I could."

After studying photography at college, Finn formed Betchadupa, but it's solo that he's at his happiest, the do-it-all whiz kid with his ragbag of instruments and repertoire of songs; he's got enough now to entertain a bunch of Hell's Angels all night – which is handy, because he recently had to do exactly that.

"You get a lot of these biker gangs hanging around beach towns in New Zealand in the summer. They can be pretty brutal. Actually, that's not true – they were my best mates at the beginning. It's just when I tried to stop playing that they got a bit menacing. I had to play well into the next day."

Finn likes the element of danger when he plays live, where he's usually accompanied by his friend Eliza Jane on harmonies, vocal loops and autoharp. "People like that we're casual, spontaneous and don't take things too seriously. There's always the risk of it falling apart, with all the loops and stuff. We're on the edge of disaster. But that can be quite stimulating. I could fall over at any moment. In fact, I usually do. I've got a lot of cuts and bruises and sprains. It's a good feeling, like battle wounds."

• I'll Be Lightning is out now on Transgressive. Liam Finn plays King Tut's, Glasgow, on 19 July.