Finn Brothers: Everyone Is Here

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * *)

Anyone who had a soft spot for Finn, the first album that the brothers made under their own names will be thankful that they haven't gone into the second with the same attitude.

The first one was a DIY, knockabout affair, occasionally goofy, indulgent and a little lacking in cohesion. It did rock - on the guitar-scorched Suffer Never - and it did roll - on the folk-rock Angel's Heap - but it didn't do much else that endured.

This is a more ambitious affair by far. So much so, it's been recorded twice - an early version with the Kiwi rhythm section of Bones Hillman and Ross Burge and Brit producer Tony Visconti (Bowie, T-Rex) was finished then abandoned, bar a few surviving string arrangements.

It was effectively recorded again with long-time Crowded House producer Mitchell Froom and mixer Bob Clearmountain.

The Finns' dissatisfaction with the first version and their return to the familiar may indicate that they want to do something about their declining market share, especially after a couple of critically well-received solo albums seemed to fall through the cracks.

The assumption would be that they - and Neil Finn's London-based record label Parlophone - wanted a follow-up to Woodface, the Crowded House album which started out life as a first attempt at a Finn brothers record and was a runaway success in Britain. And with its shindig sound and rousing choruses, some of the new album's tracks may find a place on radio in the way their solo albums haven't.

However, these are different times. And there's a danger, knowing its protracted creation, in dismissing it as just another bunch of well-crafted tunes by experienced and canny pop tradesmen.

But live with the songs a little and something else sinks in. Though the tunes are generally lively, the lyrics are contemplative of grown-up concerns and the connections that matter.

There are plenty of albums where boy meets girl, boy loses girl - and chorus. There aren't many where brother discusses meaning of life and family with brother, and you come away feeling uplifted by the experience.

However sunny the choruses, some of the songs give a feeling of middle-age dread and the contemplation of mortality, laced with quiet resolve. It's as if the Finns are taking stock of their lives, digging deeper than the familiar picture we already have of them.

That's especially true on Disembodied Voices, which talks of their boyhood conversations 40 years ago after lights out - the song with its resonant harmonies evoking the notion of a fraternal collective imagination. Its four-square chord pattern is decorated by mandolin and banjo, an instrument which can risk evoking images of a family that's rather too close-knit, but sounds perfectly lovely here.

There are further reflections on family on the opener I Won't Give In (in which Neil Finn sings "What does it mean/ When you belong to someone/ You're born with a name/ you carry it on"). While on A Life Between Us which finds a geographical image for their brotherhood ("Stare at each other/like the banks of a river/ and we can't get any closer/ we form a life between us").

As expected, there are echoes of past Finn musical chapters - Won't Give In sounds like a downbeat Weather With You at its start; the early minor-key bars of Nothing Wrong with You suggests a similar mood to Four Seasons in One Day; the wiry and slightly wacky Homesick sounds like son of Chocolate Cake; Edible Flowers, which has been around a while, is a piano-based art-ballad tag-team vocal of the old Split Enz school and the upbeat Part of Me, Part of You suggests mid- to late-period Enz.

But if much of it sounds familiar, it still feels vibrant and honest, no more so than on Luckiest Man Alive, a Tim Finn song not unlike his solo hit Persuasion at the beginning. Its ode to love has a few lines that would sound very Valentine's Day card if it wasn't for his genuine vocal performance - it makes you believe he is that man.

It does have its musical quirks - All God's Children, with its glam-rock throb sounds like a backhand compliment to Visconti and his best-known 70s clients; the chorus of Nothing Wrong With You is quite the Phil Spector-and-Righteous-Brothers widescreen thriller; and the closing Gentle Hum is just that.

It's a set that delivers all you'd expect from the Finns and a little more - a couple of new pages from the family album, heartfelt sentiments, songcraft and killer tunes. It seems they still bring out the best in each other, even if they take their own good time doing it.

Label: Parlophone