Liam Finn's a bright light hoping to catch a break

Liam Finn performing during this year's SXSW festival in Austin,Texas. (Richard perry/the new york times)

AUSTIN, Texas - The moment was so poetically perfect that it felt like it must have been staged.

Liam Finn had been playing a showcase at South by Southwest at the Ale House on 6th Street for about a half hour in near total darkness because of some weird electrical glitch that allowed sound but not light (or air conditioning, unfortunately).

"We can all be who we want to be in this light," Finn joked from the stage, as a member of the packed crowd produced a tiny, high-powered flashlight from her purse to shine on Finn and his back-up singer and percussionist, EJ Barnes.

Yet just as Finn began singing the first chorus of the title track of his 2007 solo debut, "I'll Be Lightning" - in fact, right as he was murmuring, "I'll be lightning, I'll be lightning, I'll be lightning" - the club lights slowly flickered to life. "There was no conspiracy, we weren't even aware," Barnes said with a laugh in a interview a few days later. "Maybe whoever turned the lights on had a conspiracy."

Conspiracy or no, it was a tidy metaphor for Finn's experience at SXSW, as each showcase (he played an exhausting seven in all) shed light on the 24-year-old singer-songwriter, who was born in Australia and raised in New Zealand.

Following the festival, Finn planned to officially launch himself into homelessness in an effort to make the most of his three-year US work visa. He'll crisscross the country several times - tonight he stops at the Middle East Upstairs, next month he hits the West Coast opening for Eddie Vedder - and hopes to build on the interest generated in Austin.

"There always seem to be a few things [at SXSW] that stick in people's heads," said a bright-eyed and bushy-bearded Finn earlier in the day in the bustling lobby of his hotel. "Hopefully we're one of the bands that people want to come along and see and remember."

The line at the Ale House that night was testament both to the strong reviews for "Lightning" and the excitement surrounding his unique live show.

Recorded analog-style at his father's studio in New Zealand - that would be Neil Finn of Split Enz and Crowded House fame - "Lightning" is by turns cozy and expansive. Favoring wistful pop melodies drifting in atmospheres both urgent ("Energy Spent") and melancholy ("Gather to the Chapel") and slathered in harmonies, the album features Liam on almost all of the instruments, from drums to theremin.

The melancholy stems, he said, from the disintegration of his rock band, Betchadupa, which Finn fronted from the age of 16 and which gained a healthy following in Australia, and the simultaneous collapse of a romantic relationship just after a move to London.

"Ultimately, I was a bit miserable about things," he said. "But writing music is quite a therapeutic thing, and I really felt like I had something to say even if I didn't realize it at the time."

He cheered himself up by heading home and throwing himself into the studio. "I was just approaching the record with a demo aesthetic," said Finn, an admitted "massive fan" of the late Elliott Smith, who took a similar handcrafted route. He was also approaching it as something of a control freak. "I guess after being in a four-piece rock band for so long what I really realized was really important and also something that I seem to really enjoy doing was creating those atmospheres and trying to make an instant mood. It's hard to do that when you're in a band. I found it a lot harder to get my vision across."

Live, he and Barnes re-create the album's layered textures by building a wall of sound with the help of loops, pedal effects, and Finn's frenetic live drumming.

"Mesmerized," is how Steve Smith described his reaction to two Finn shows he caught in Austin, where he was also playing. The former Dirty Vegas frontman, who also uses looping in his live performances, was impressed with how Finn dresses up his songs without burying their elegant melodic foundations.

"It's very hard because the world is saturated with singer-songwriters at the moment and you really need to do something unique and special to really set yourself apart," said Smith, "and I think he's almost single-handedly done that with his songwriting craft."

"That just really evolved over the last couple of years since I've been doing the solo stuff," said Finn, who is aware that several other artists, including Jon Brion, a personal hero, take a one-man-band approach onstage. "I really like how it's become a new instrument, not like a gimmick. Everybody's got their own spin on it."

Solid songwriting and performance skills aside, Finn knows that at least some of the people who flocked to his shows did so because of his last name.

"I'm a big fan of his father's so I wanted to catch him and see what he was up to himself," admitted Smith, who was pleased to see the son forging his own path. "He's going to make his own name for sure."

"He's really respected and known amongst the real music lovers," Liam Finn agreeably said of his father, "but your average Joe doesn't know who Neil Finn is."

Right now, he's simply the world's biggest Liam Finn fan, Googling his son daily and enjoying his success.

"It's really sweet," the younger Finn said. "And I think in a way, I guess knowing what he knows after years and years of doing it, he's kind of reliving the enjoyment a little."

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.