Album review: Neil Finn, Dizzy Heights

Neil Finn has enjoyed an industrious career as a musician. As well as fronting Split Enz and Crowded House, he has released two albums with his brother Tim as The Finn Brothers, and one with his wife Sharon as Pajama Club.

Dizzy Heights is his third album as a solo artist. Produced by Dave Fridmann in New York, it features Finn’s wife Sharon on bass and his sons Liam and Elroy on guitar and drums respectively. If that makes it sounds like a cosy family project, the kind of album an artist makes in middle age, you’d be right: at 55, Finn is well-settled, and Dizzy Heights is just what you’d expect from the man who penned chart hits such as ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ and ‘Weather With You’.

Impressions, the first track, channels the spirit of John Lennon at his most introspective, with Finn singing: “Got no plans for the future/Got to make good impressions”. It’s pleasant enough, if not exactly ground-breakiing.

‘Flying in the Face of Love’ is the track that leaps out as a potential chart single, a slickly produced uptempo number with a catchy chorus that seems a perfect fit for daytime radio.

In his lyric writing, Finn can’t quite get out the door. ‘Better Than TV’ is about his hope that the reality of a love affair can be a convincing distraction from the joys of watching television, while ‘Recluse’ is about the attraction of domesticity and the need to leave the comforts of home if one is to pursue a career as an artist.

‘Lights of New York’, is a paean to the city that never sleeps. It’s the weakest track, with Finn tinkling the keys on piano and crooning the kind of compliments New York has long since learned to take in its stride. It’s been done a thousand times before — if Frank Sinatra didn’t nail it on ‘New York, New York’, then Grace Jones did on ‘The Apple Stretching’ — and Finn’s slight tune brings nothing new.

If you liked Crowded House, you’re bound to like Dizzy Heights, but it’s hardly the album that will win Neil Finn new fans.