KIWI SONGWRITER HARPER FINN TAKES FIRST STEP TO CONQUER THE UK AND BEYOND
LIVE REVIEW |HARPER FINN| BERMONDSEY SOCIAL CLUB, LONDON 6th August 2025 by Tom Jenkinson
Walking through a quiet suburb of Auckland, New Zealand in early 2020 I stumbled on the local community notice board, and I wanted to see what made a place like this tick. A newspaper clipping caught my eye; a local lad was in the spotlight having written and recorded two new singles which were due to be released. A quick search on Spotify and the sultry piano groove and dark bass of that first track would not leave me for the rest of my time in New Zealand.
That song was Harper Finn’s ‘Conversations (With the Moon)‘; it had a brooding maturity rarely heard in a debut single and there was an intricacy to the piano that felt considered, technical, and punchy. It had a clear and unique voice, which sounded refined, without the jaded sense of an artist trying to reinvent themself. Crucially and above all else, it was just a devastatingly good pop song. If this was a taste of more to come then this was one of those rare, exciting moments to catch an artist that could bloom into something much bigger. It felt like someone had written this tiny little secret on a piece of newspaper and had pinned it to the noticeboard of some far-flung corner of the earth waiting for me to come across it.
Perhaps naively, the surname “Finn” did not register with me until further reading told me Harper hails from the Finn family of Split Enz and Crowded House fame. It made sense then that Harper’s own songwriting should be so finely tuned at such a young age, given he has been honing his craft from day one.
Fast forward to the present day and a warm summer’s night back in London, and I am starting to feel vindicated as ‘Conversations (With the Moon)‘ opens Finn’s debut UK show at Bermondsey Social Club five years later. There is a drama to those opening notes that is reminiscent of another New Zealand native, Lorde, whose secret Glastonbury set this year started with a similar sense of theatre and anticipation. While this is a long way from home, Harper has spent the last year living and writing in New York, whilst also touring Latin America with indie outfit Balu Brigada, Harper has a confidence and assertion about him that is clear from the off.
The set showcases Harper’s pop-writing credentials to date, with songs such as ‘Doves‘ and ‘Dance Away These Days‘ showing his potential for big radio play. Meanwhile, there is an undercurrent of 70s nostalgia in recent single ‘Love & Loneliness‘ that feels like a lost cassette from Arctic Monkeys Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino that got overdubbed by a Tame Impala session. Harper clearly draws his influence from every musical era up to present day and beyond (you can imagine the earlier Dance Away These Days doing numbers on TikTok) as ‘Where Did She Go‘ is pared back 60s pop through and through.
There are crucially few gimmicks on offer tonight: the stage is barely big enough for Harper’s band, so the experimental dance is at a minimum (but not altogether absent). However tonight is about introducing a new audience to “new” talent. And he might be in luck, as Marcus Russell, manager for Oasis, is in attendance tonight, keeping his finger on the pulse and perhaps he knows something that we don’t. Yet.
Harper Finn’s new single Broken Glass is out on 14th August.
