The past, as someone very famous once said, is a different country. Neil Finn's past, however, occupies familiar terrain. Alongside his brother Tim, Finn was once a member of Split Enz, initially New Zealand's quirkiest band never to truly break the commercial barrier. When that band split up in the mid-1980s, Finn formed Crowded House, a monolithic pop band which distributed some of the best pop tunes of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
While he's a moderate success in Europe, he's a star down under. Awarded an OBE (as was Tim) in 1993 for their contribution to the music of New Zealand, Finn is also a willing participant and patron of a Crowded House exhibition in Melbourne's Museum for the Performing Arts. Which makes it all the more intriguing that the man sitting before me in a London hotel is such a low-key, sweet-natured guy bereft of ego, arrogance and insolence.
Perhaps it's his Irish background. "We've connected with many relatives over the last eight to 10 years, because prior to that my mother hadn't kept in touch with all the family. Then there was a letter from a second cousin, and we learnt all about our Irish cousins. We have met most of them now, and they're a good bunch of people. If there was anywhere else in the world we would live, it would be Ireland. I don't know if we'd do it now, but perhaps when our son is older. At the moment, New Zealand suits us. But we discussed moving to Ireland about the time we moved back to New Zealand from Melbourne."
In 1996, following the disbanding of Crowded House, Finn began working on his debut solo album, a collection of songs that wouldn't be released until June 1998. He had planned an extensive break with a friend, a painting holiday, no less. But this quickly turned into a music session, making Finn realise that, whatever distractions come to hand, writing songs is virtually impossible to ignore. Try Whistling This was Finn's first collection of songs written and performed outside the confines of the regularly fractious Crowded House, a band whose internal volatility underpinned their neat-and-tidy music.
As a solo debut, it was hardly revolutionary, yet it showcased Finn's unerring talents and his instinctive knack as a tunesmith. If New Zealand were to have a mirror-image of a Paul McCartney, then Neil Finn would more than likely be it.
Finn has no interest "in reliving or going back" to the days of Crowded House. Now free to argue with himself and win, he is based in New Zealand and will remain there for some time. "I find I can do more in New Zealand than ever before," he says, warming his hands beside the fire. "I have a studio in my house and I work in there a lot. I've really built a life in New Zealand, but I get to go away at regular intervals to work and to have holidays. That's all about having a balance in wanting to have both work and a family life."
With Finn's new album, One Nil, he extends his patent hypnotic hooks with another dozen stinging examples of fine pop songs. While his debut was, in essence, an experimental record invested with a multilayered and textured sound, One Nil comes across as more assured, celebratory and confirmed. Yet overriding the sweetness of Finn's tunes is his abiding sense of melancholia. He might glibly talk about it on stage, but in his songs, it's a continual, sombre presence.
"There's no right or wrong with music," he says. "If people feel the songs are melancholic, then they are. I'm attracted to that aspect, anyway, that sweet sadness. But it has to be tempered with a sense of hope. I'm flattered to be told that's what it evokes because it's something that's genuine.
"It's essential to have an emotional honesty. It doesn't have to be an honesty of detail, or narrative. People can spot fakes. Then again, maybe they can't - all you have to do is look at the charts. The sort of people I like and relate to want some kind of feeling that the singer is being truthful - both in the way the song is performed and the atmosphere that's evoked. Empathy, as well, plays a part. That's the secret to evoking an emotion in somebody - empathising with the mood or the sentiment that's being created."
Finn's self-confessed, sweet sadness is part of his nature. He says he writes essentially sad songs not because he's a morbid, depressive person but because, like most people (if you dig deep enough beneath the surface), he has a sense of emotional yearning or longing. "There's a sadness about a lack of connection between each other in this world. I can really sense that these days. It's an amazing world in so many ways; there are good things happening and a lot of good people doing good stuff, but there's an aching out there.
"It's quite good to be able to put a voice to that in some way."
Finn is proud that people are listening to his music and that it seems to have either a comforting effect or is inspiring. One of the best, most treasured aspects of being a songwriter, he says, is that people have the sense that someone else feels the same way they do. "It's not me dishing out mush for people to have a good weep to," he comments.
"It's a deeply mysterious thing sometimes, this songwriting lark, and occasionally I have days where I don't have a musical bone in my body. It always returns at some point, however, possibly because it's a force of will."
Neil Finn's new album, One Nil, was released yesterday on Parlophone. He plays Dublin's Olympia theatre on April 22nd