Nothing better confirms what FINN is not than the album-opening blast of "Kiss the Road of Rarotonga," a song so raw and so unexpected that it becomes an aural soda cracker, neutralizing the tastebuds and wiping away preconceptions. Besides serving this important purpose, "Kiss the Road" also happens to be a damn fine rocker. The raucous bass and guitar instrumental break rolls around your head; the chorus works its best when you scream it along with Finn. Inspired by a motorcycle wipeout Tim experienced in New Zealand, "Kiss the Road" is mercurial and energetic, embracing the moment as if it was the accident itself that precipitated the joining of these two songwriters.
It wouldn't be a Finn collaboration if the brothers didn't play on contrasts, and this is displayed perfectly by jumping from the rowdy optimism and carelessness of the lead-off track into the minor-key forboding of "Only Talking Sense." In a voice frenetic with angst, Neil sings of being "afraid of what I'll find when independence comes." The verses smell like panic but the choruses are delivered with calm resolve, and both echo a sweet defeat.
The differences between these first two songs -- thematically and musically -- are echoed throughout the record. Every tune starts from scratch and creates a new recipe, keeping us wondering what bizarre sound might be dreamed up next. Instruments like the tea-chest bass and the mandolin add a dash of "island" to the modern pop and nod to both brothers' interest in their culture. One can imagine Tim rooting around outside the studio looking for interesting contraptions to use as percussion. (He got to fulfill a childhood dream of being a drummer, and his turn at the skins is necessarily uncomplicated, letting the songs shine forth.) The Chamberlain keyboard has been a favorite of Neil's for years, and it makes copious appearances on almost half the tracks, lending scratchy, tape-loop samples to an album already rife with references to recording techniques of the 1960s.
Engineer Tchad Blake (Mitchell Froom's right-hand man, and Neil's too for Dave Dobbyn's Twist) probably stirred the pot a few times, most notably on the spook-evoking "Mood Swinging Man," which sounds like it was lifted right out of the Latin Playboys' playbook (Blake and Froom are members of that group) and adds in a lazy melody that slinks up and down your spine.
The centerpiece of FINN is "Suffer Never," a driving, addictive number that climaxes in an epic melange of electric guitar riffs, swirling breaths and winding voices. "Suffer" is sandwiched between the Neil piano ballad "Last Day of June" and the intimate "Angels Heap" (starring Tim doing both his high part *and* Neil's low part), making us ride an emotional push-me-pull-you. This strategy is a *good* thing: Finn's audience will keep focused as long as they feel a little off-balance. Just as they are pushing their abilities as music makers, Finn never lets you settle as a music listener.
If one assumes that the main vocalist for each tune is also the primary writer, then FINN is an especially promising collection of tunes for Tim, a typically strong turn for Neil. But equally entertaining are the two songs where they share leads: "Eyes of the World," the closest thing to a formula Crowded House pop song on FINN and a hefty nod to Paul McCartney (and by God, it has "hit written all over it); and "Niwhai," a bizarre ditty that calls up the spectre of Split Enz by describing a lover halfway between Neil's "Iris" and the alien girlfriend of Tim's "Poor Boy." "Niwhai" feels the most experimental of the album (with some truly fascinating percussion sounds), but enough of it works that, upon repeated listenings, one realizes that Finn got away with it; not an easy feat after the trite opening lyric: "Niwhai, she's so fly."
Adding to the experimental, loose approach is the fact that none of the songs end in a fade-out; most just die in their tracks. While this works nicely for the wilder material like "Kiss the Road" and "Niwhai," it seems to bring the mood of some of the more polished tunes like "Suffer Never" and "Eyes of the World" to a jarring end.
But this is a tiny quibble, especially when compared to the tunes that simply miss their mark: Neil's "Last Day of June," while calling up John Lennon's piano settings for "Imagine," ends up retreading the somber, humanity-on-the-brink-of-destruction emotions expressed in Crowded House's "Walking on the Spot," and not nearly as effectively. "Bullets in My Hairdo" is a silly fluff-piece that may be trying to make a political point, though one would be hard-pressed to pinpoint it. And "Paradise (Wherever You Are)" is a misdirected, island-flavored number with a lost melody that lulls rather than pulling us in. Thankfully, "Eyes of the World" is placed between these last two numbers, keeping the listener buoyant long enough to forgive these weaknesses.
The partnership/rivalry between Tim and Neil Finn has been heavily surmised as their musical threads and family ties have knotted and untangled over three decades. From the outside their relationship seems complex; listening to their responses to press questions along these lines, you realize that in fact it is quite simple: Neil and Tim are contrasting colors, and the sibling bond drives them to search for tricks to blending those contrasts into something rich. They proved this ability once already in 1989, where a two-week period netted several songs that ended up on Crowded House's Woodface (1991) and Tim's Before and After (1993). With FINN, Tim and Neil have taken their songwriting relationship a step further, showing that the first songs were not just a collaborative anomaly but a promise of what would come.