Pop music in 2019 continues to get darker, more understated and more moody - and a new artist on the scene leading the charge is Harper Finn.
The young Kiwi leans more into the alt/indie side of pop but with a maturity you wouldn't expect from someone who's only 21. His eerie new song Conversations (With The Moon) is hot on the airwaves over at triple j - coinciding with the release of a arty black & white music video too - so we decided to get to know the mysterious new singer.
So who is Harper Finn?
The singer/songwriter grew up in an uber-musical family in Auckland, listening to everything from The Clash to Kate Bush to Serge Gainsbourg and learning piano from the age of six. It's unsurprising given the style of his tunes, however in his teen years, Harper expanded out to hip hop, playing keys in a huge 8-piece hip hop group of musos who were much older than him.
At The University Of Auckland, Harper studied History and Politics, allowing this to fuse itself to his lyrical content - he now loves to focus on the idea of the collective consciousness in his music, as well as the fleeting nature of memory, longing and adulthood.
It's a sense we get strongly from Converstions (With The Moon), with lyrics that swirl around a slightly haunted atmosphere. Harper explains, “The idea for Conversations (With The Moon) came to me as I walked home alone from a house party one night. I was walking along the empty streets while my mind raced around the night that was, accompanied only by the moonlight.”
Teenage Queen is borne with a slightly more eclectic feel, though it's still suitably mysterious with offbeat synths and a post-punk sense of darkness. The two songs came to be as Harper was finishing high school and starting uni, a big turning point in his life.
"Conversations (With The Moon) and Teenage Queen mark a time for me - the end of high school years and the start of uni - they're snap shots of what was happening and are my own words, music and production. I guess looking back it made sense to have the songs paired together to encapsulate that period of my life," he tells Coup De Main magazine.
That's kind of all we know about Harper Finn at this point, but if these two songs are anything to go by, we think he'll keep us very interested with his introspective style. He's also playing a show at Sydney's The Newsagency on October 9th - grab your tickets here.
