Phil Selway sings his own songs with 7 Worlds Collide at Dingwalls

Phil Selway stood at the front of the stage at Dingwalls in Camden on 11 August with an acoustic guitar and sang two songs of his own, “The Ties That Bind Us” and “The Witching Hour”. He and Ed O'Brien were playing with Neil Finn and Wilco's Glenn Kotche and John Stirratt, in the only 7 Worlds Collide show for the new album, The Sun Came Out. Selway had stepped out front in Auckland in January.

Selway wrote both his songs alone and cut “The Ties That Bind Us” in one take. His two lead vocals are the first he has put on a record. He also co-wrote “3 Worlds Collide”, a piece for drums and percussion, with Kotche and Neil Baldock. O'Brien plays guitar across both discs and co-wrote “Learn to Crawl”. He also co-wrote “Bodhisattva Blues”, which he built from a Tibetan chant and sings with Neil Finn.

The Sun Came Out is the second 7 Worlds Collide record, after the five Auckland concerts of 2001 that Finn, Eddie Vedder, Johnny Marr, O'Brien, Selway and others played and released as a live album. This one is a double of 24 new songs, recorded in three weeks in New Zealand over Christmas 2008 and January 2009 with Jim Scott producing. It is out in Britain on 31 August and in the US on 29 September, and O'Brien says all the publishing income from its songs goes to Oxfam.

The set opened with Crowded House's “Distant Sun”, the 1993 single with the line that gave the project its name. There was no rehearsal at all…well, there was a bit last week with acoustic guitars, next to the pool, that's it³, O'Brien says. Finn wants to gather the whole cast again some day, and with two days' rehearsal instead of an afternoon, he says, we could probably do something amazing!³

Setlist, Dingwalls, 11 August 2009