TimeOut's interview with Neil Finn last week explained his urge to work with producer Dave Fridmann, whose trademark psychedelic grandeur has made records by Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips sound like they come from another planet.
One, where, given the American studio guy's affection for falsetto, suggests its atmosphere has a fairly high helium content.
Hearing the familiar voice of Finn - often bounced up an octave - in this unfamiliar territory is at first disconcerting. This isn't the jovial electro-wonkiness of his last outing with his missus-and-mates, the Pajama Club. And it certainly doesn't offer the home comforts of a Crowded House or Finn brothers album.
Initially, Dizzy Heights feels a bit weightless, perhaps due to the mid-tempo soul-shaped, coolly funky songs that start it out. There's something a bit Style Council around the edges of the airy title track and something a bit latter-day Roxy Music about Flying in the Face of Love.
But it turns out, Finn's first album to bear just his name in a decade soon starts to really take hold about the time Divebomber is unleashing a fevered dream of symphonic pop.
And after that it's all on to somewhere quite magical via the infectious lopsided groove beneath Better Than TV and a Stone Roses-sized swagger on Pony Ride. White Lies and Alibis adheres a lyric inspired by the plight of one of the West Memphis Three to a soundscape which suggests Finn's Crowded House tune Distant Sun gone supernova.
But the most affecting song is In My Blood, a reflection on one's own mortality and what you leave behind, that might recall the Beatles' In My Life while hitting some of the same spots the Flaming Lips frequently have in songs about the life, the universe and everything.
With the lovely late-night harmonium-powered hymnal Lights of New York to out on, Dizzy Heights floats back to ground level quite beautifully.
It's a fine end to a strangely lovely left-turn kind of album that feels like it will be still throwing up surprises for months to come.
Verdict:
Finn finds altitude to make ears pop
Click here to buy Dizzy Heights by Neil Finn.
- TimeOut