Album: The Finn Brothers

Everyone Is Here, PARLOPHONE

Each album released by Neil and Tim Finn inevitably gets compared to Crowded House's Woodface, the crowning glory of the brothers' careers. And is inevitably found wanting. That's the problem with crowning glories: the only way is down, unless you possess the protean ability of a Dylan or a Bowie. Unfortunately, the Finns only know the one way: they're crafters of accomplished adult pop, their Beatle-derived roots impossible to disguise, whatever the quirky sonic strategies employed by producer Mitchell Froom, and their songs thus always tainted with a certain predictability. So they end up making albums such as Everyone Is Here, another collection of mature, methodical, rather maudlin songs about the value of monogamy ("Luckiest Man Alive"), salvaging a shaky relationship ("Anything Can Happen"), bridging the gulf between people ("A Life Between Us"), and the strength of family ("Won't Give in"). After five or six such sermons, you're gagging for a dash of sex, drugs or rock'n'roll. Ins

Each album released by Neil and Tim Finn inevitably gets compared to Crowded House's Woodface, the crowning glory of the brothers' careers. And is inevitably found wanting. That's the problem with crowning glories: the only way is down, unless you possess the protean ability of a Dylan or a Bowie. Unfortunately, the Finns only know the one way: they're crafters of accomplished adult pop, their Beatle-derived roots impossible to disguise, whatever the quirky sonic strategies employed by producer Mitchell Froom, and their songs thus always tainted with a certain predictability. So they end up making albums such as Everyone Is Here, another collection of mature, methodical, rather maudlin songs about the value of monogamy ("Luckiest Man Alive"), salvaging a shaky relationship ("Anything Can Happen"), bridging the gulf between people ("A Life Between Us"), and the strength of family ("Won't Give in"). After five or six such sermons, you're gagging for a dash of sex, drugs or rock'n'roll. Instead, you get "Disembodied Voices", about childhood hopes and fears, or "All God's Children", about universal love, which - spare us! - sounds like Wings. It would be nice if, once in a while, they could suggest that growing older wasn't such a grim prospect.