Though the elegant return of pop-savant sibling duo Neil and Tim Finn arrived in August, Everyone Is Here isn't a summer record. Beneath super-slick production by Mitchell Froom (along with toast-of-Hollywood Jon Brion and Bowie/T. Rex knob-twiddler Tony Visconti) and the Down Under brothers' usual surging melodies, a barely disguised melancholy broods like an evil Finn twin chained up in the basement. The Finns' latest is glossy, emotional, and sure to satisfy longtime listeners-- as well as any Stereophonics or Aqualung fans paying their respects.
Tim, the elder Finn, was the first to come to international prominence, fronting clownishly costumed new-wavers Split Enz. Little brother Neil joined up on guitar prior to 1977's Dizrhythmia, and in 1979 his composition "I Got You" became the band's breakthrough hit. After garnering MTV airtime with videos like "Six Months in a Leaky Boat", the group folded in the mid-1980s. Tim pursued a solo career, while Neil went on to lead Crowded House, whose "Don't Dream It's Over" remains as brilliant as it is inoffensive (I'm pretty sure I heard it at a dentist's office once while getting a tooth filled, but I still put it on mix CDs). The brothers reunited for Crowded House's 1991 Woodface, which still stands as their collaborative high watermark; their first album as The Finn Brothers, 1995's Finn, was an exotic, eclectic affair.
While not on par with that mid-90s LP, Everyone Is Here combines the skillfully crafted pop effervescence of Woodface and the moodiness of Finn. Opener and first single "Won't Give In" is a catchy bit of lite-rock, introducing the gorgeous brotherly harmonies that recur throughout the record. But it also includes lines like "We all have to die alone". The song, with its "Everyone I love is here" chorus, is both a celebration of life and a middle-age awareness of death's nearness. The Finns' mother died not long before the album's release, and a sense of mortality occasionally manages to leak through Froom's pristine production, lavish strings and all.
The sadness floats to the top on "Edible Flowers", a mawkish piano ballad that some will surely love. "Everybody wants the same thing," the brothers sing, "to see another birthday." Sure, that and an iPod. But the typically swooning chorus, while a touch easy-listening, is lush enough that it renders the sad-eyed lyrics superfluous. The bouncy, overproduced "Homesick" could be an anthem for disaffected progressives unable to secure Canadian residency ("Homesick for the country that I'm living in"), but it's really another example of the pathos lurking below the band's popcraft. Closer "Gentle Hum" provides four and a half minutes of calm, almost-meditative reflection apropos of the track's name.
Not everything here is as seamless as the brothers' interlocking voices. "All God's Children" starts off with a fit of garage-y guitar downstrokes (you know, like that one Strokes song) and then engages in a possibly tongue-in-cheek discussion of theogony worthy of Kevin Smith's self-importantly silly Dogma. The bright, earnest "Anything Can Happen" is hook-filled enough to be a single, but it and the subsequent love song "Luckiest Man Alive" rarely go past the cliches of their refrains (much like Mick Jagger's new "Old Habits Die Hard"). You'd think lifelong songwriters would be able to come up with titles that hadn't already been used by Air Supply, in Jagger's case, and World In Motion-era Jackson Browne, for the Finns.
The album is at its best when the brothers' knack for pop melodies meets subject matter that is poignant, not maudlin or even merely sufficient. "Disembodied Voices" fulfills this album's promise, reminiscing about brotherhood, childhood, and harmony. That's what Everyone Is Here is really about. Again, from the opener: "Everyone I love is here/ Play it once, then we disappear." Darkness might be gathering somewhere, but loved ones can always gather together and raise their voices above the din to achieve a brief, transitory, but undeniable peace. Even if that means sounding like late-period Wings.
