Tim Finn: Imaginary Kingdom

Herald rating: * * * *

That Finn the elder recorded this, his seventh solo album - which effectively equals his studio efforts with Split Enz - in Nashville is actually something of a worry.

No, not the risk of it coming out sounding like he's auditioning for the Highway of Legends package tour. But his lacklustre 1999 effort Say It Is So was also recorded in the city best known for its country music.

In 2001 he recorded the vastly superior Feeding the Gods at home. With its stripped-back rock'n'roll energy, some of us declared it a late-career classic recalling the manic Finn of the Enz.

But it didn't exactly catch on.

And coming after the lush Finn brothers album, that might all explain the more measured, ornate kitchen-sink production approach to Imaginary Kingdom.

It's very much an album which seems at first dominated by the jaunty pop-Tim, much of it - like opening track Couldn't Be Done - recalling his quirky 80s efforts.

Sometimes the echoes of that decade resound too loudly - Dead Flowers threatens to turn into Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight while Still the Song is whimsical to a fault.

But he does deliver some Enz-ish rock vigour on the anthemic Horizon and the upbeat So Precious as well as soul-gospel leanings on Show Yourself.

But much of this is a sit-down affair of elegant tune. That's at best on the piano ballad likes of Astounding Moon or Winter Light (which was used in as the end titles song in the Narnia film), the hymnal nautically themed finale Unsinkable or the moving Salt to the Sea - a touching song about the aftermath of the death of Enz/Crowded House drummer Paul Hester.

Verdict: Former Enz bloke's songwriting skills still in top form

Label: Capitol