Ed O'Brien on TV3

Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien have brought their families to Piha for a month of recording with Neil Finn, and Selway tells TV3 it would be rude to turn down an invitation from Finn. O'Brien can't surf, but has water wings. The St James shows with Finn nearly eight years ago were monumental for O'Brien, and they have been asking Finn ever since when he would do it again. They have three weeks to make an album of new material, and O'Brien has chords and a melody but no lyrics. “I wouldn't call mine a song,” he says. Two days earlier he saw Liam Finn for the first time this trip, with a new beard, and took him for Eddie Vedder, who couldn't make it.