Pop From a Pacific Perspective

If you ran into rock singers Neil and Tim Finn on the street, you probably wouldn’t guess that they are brothers.

Neil, 30, is leader of the band Crowded House and he looks youthful, wholesome and thoughtful--just the kind of face that can (and does) elicit squeals from teen-aged fans.

By contrast, Tim, 36, whose third solo album has just been released by Capitol Records, is more brooding and intense. His mop of brown hair, piercing eyes and rugged face suggest an explosive nature, something of a cross between Dennis Quaid and Mickey Rourke.

But their accents off-stage make it clear that they are at least countrymen: probably Australian.

Well close.

The Finns may sound, mate , like Aussie Paul Hogan, but they actually hail from the 7,000-population town of Te Awa Mutu, New Zealand.

“There’s a lack of awareness of New Zealand in America,” said Tim, shortly after flying into Los Angeles this week to help launch his new album, titled simply “Tim Finn.”

In town, he crossed paths with Neil, who had just wrapped up a Crowded House tour of Canada and the West Coast. Tim will soon begin his own concert tour, including a show at the Roxy on May 4.

“Australia has come more into consciousness, but I find people who can’t place New Zealand geographically,” Tim said.

The American fascination with all things Aussie (the country has been the source of far more international pop-rock hits than any other non-U.S. region in the Pacific Rim) has failed to note the distinction of the related but different cultures that exist on two islands to the southeast of Australia.

“The Australians were sent there, it’s a convict culture,” said Tim to explain the persistent macho image as reinforced by characters like Hogan’s “Crocodile” Dundee. “New Zealand was populated by dreamers looking for a new world, a new paradise. And though the land fit that, they found a cultural clash with the native culture very grim. It made the people very melancholy.”

But the brothers also admit that they themselves have long been ignorant of a large part of their New Zealand roots and have of late been swept up in a rising consciousness of the indigenous peoples of the South Pacific.

Crowded House recently contributed a song to “Building Bridges,” an Australian collection of white pop and traditional and modern aboriginal acts, and performed at a concert for the same cause.

And a key track, “Parihaka,” on Tim’s new album, tells the story of Te Whiti, a Maori leader who preached nonviolence during a time of bloody conflicts between his people and the white New Zealand settlers in the 1880s.

“We weren’t taught about him in school,” Tim said of the Maori chief. “There’s been a lot of denial about those wars. Very few writers will write anything as specifically New Zealand as I did with that song.”

Neil agreed. “Most whites don’t understand the aboriginals,” he said, crediting the band Midnight Oil with helping to awaken an interest in the native cultures. “They tend to think they’re a bunch of drunk savages, but they’re a strong and rich culture.”

But the Finns believe things are changing. “There’s a real fresh culture emerging in New Zealand,” said Tim, who spends a lot of time in Auckland, New Zealand, though he lives in London now. “A real mix of Polynesian, Maori and Europeans. It’s opening in the music field as well. There’s a burgeoning rap culture based primarily on Maori and Polynesian youth.”

Tim sees this as part of a growing awareness of the whole Pacific region. “Australia and New Zealand are growing closer, and there’s more and more Japanese tourists pouring in, and there’s a growing awareness of the Russian presence in the Pacific. And Greenpeace is very active, so there’s a real protective feeling toward the Pacific.”

The attention to the Pacific is new for the Finns, who like many in their culture grew up relating to their ancestral roots.

“We sort of saw England as our spiritual home,” Tim said, explaining why he moved his first band, Split Enz, to England in the mid-’70s. “The Kinks and all those bands were there.”

Tim has, in fact, kept London as his home ever since, though Neil, who joined Split Enz shortly after the move, returned to Melbourne, Australia eight years ago.

Now, though, the two find themselves traversing the Pacific with regularity. Both have recorded in Los Angeles with American producer Mitchell Froom.

Said Neil, “It’s a 26-hour flight to London from Melbourne, but only 14 to Los Angeles. And Los Angeles is the first port of call for rock ‘n’ roll.”

But neither is ready to predict some new pan-Pacific culture or music.

“The danger is it would become homogenous,” said Tim, noting that New Zealanders have developed a distinctly loping brand of reggae. “It’s better that everyone stay individual than create any Pacific sound. American pop will always have an influence, just by the weight of numbers and quality. But it’s better if little regional differences emerge.”

LIVE ACTION: Tickets for Smokey Robinson at the Universal Amphitheatre on June 23 and 24 go on sale Sunday. . . . Also on sale Sunday is a record ninth date at the Forum for Neil Diamond on July 10. . . . On sale Monday is the return of Cowboy Junkies, June 8 at the Wiltern Theatre. . . . Tickets on sale today for Toni Childs at the Palace on May 11. . . . New Kids on the Block will be at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim on June 4.