His last, Here Comes the Caviar, was one of Johnson's best albums and came as the result of the Auckland-bred singer-songwriter upping sticks to Los Angeles. Anyone Can Say Goodbye is his seventh studio album and the second of his Californian period.
But unlike its breezy predecessor, this one can
feel it's spent a little too much time out in the West Coast sun. Its 10 tracks seem weighed down by few too many mid-tempo plodders saying not a lot against some lavish arrangements with the biggest offenders being the wish-you-were-here opener California's Fine and Now the Sun Is Out.
But, there are still songs vying for inclusion on that second best-of collection - like the bittersweet Venom, the lovely piano-framed Horses.
It loosens up at the half-way mark on the likes of Mountains, making the album's second half more engaging than its first, as it waltzes through the Costelloesque ballad Star of the Show, to the loping country finale When the Rain Comes.
And you can imagine - that just like Save Yourself did from the last album - the gently swaying title track will be doing great business behind the break-up scenes of American teen TV dramas any day now.
Verdict: Another likeable if predictable postcard from our man in California
Label: EMI
