Perhaps the first thing the listener needs to do with Out Of Silence is forget about the circumstances in which it was created. For four consecutive Fridays in August, Neil Finn has live-streamed the making of his fourth solo album via his Facebook page, releasing the singles More Than One Of You and Second Nature on the 11th and 18th respectively. The recording was completed in a final four-hour session on the 25th.
Clearly, this approach excited Finn and his fans. But when the process is forgotten, all that is left behind is the music itself: piano-based orchestral pop, with a minimum of drums and percussion. The album is compact at 35 minutes, and complex in its instrumentation and arrangements, scored by composer Victoria Kelly. It is beautiful on the surface and yet seemingly bottomless: these songs are too subtle and densely textured to take in all at once.
But it feels like easy listening; as natural as breathing. Finn’s last album Dizzy Heights, produced by Dave Fridmann with Kelly also on board, was unusually hard work by comparison. And it’s here that you appreciate the craft in these songs and the manner in which they’ve been executed. The songs were recorded quickly, but tightly rehearsed: you may have been a fly on the wall, but that doesn’t mean Out Of Silence was made on the fly.
Chameleon Days exemplifies how Finn can make the most sophisticated pop music sound like the simplest thing in the world. Opening with ghostly vibraphone and strings, it’s joined by Finn on piano, singing in a high falsetto, and one of the album’s few drum tracks. The lyrics shapeshift with the melody: “That must be how the music is meant to be played / The colours change in our lives / We all have our own chameleon days.”
There is so much going on in this song that it feels almost unstable, especially when it hits a surging bridge, with backing vocals doubling down heavily on the beat. But Finn’s piano keeps returning to the hook that keeps it anchored, at least until its final, breathtaking coda, where it’s finally cut loose and allowed to float away. It’s one of his loveliest creations, as good as Fall At Your Feet or Private Universe.
Second Nature is the other track with drums, played at a brisk gallop, and the most familiar in style to Finn’s work with Crowded House. But, as a steady quiver of violin and cello keep pace, male and female backing vocals alternately blend and diverge. It’s the most baroque of pop songs, reminiscent of Andy Partridge’s later work with XTC, but a deserving single, immediate in its appeal.
Other songs are much darker, as Finn goes into territory he’s rarely explored lyrically. The Law Is Always On Your Side is a short but moving piano ballad about a police killing. Terrorise Me is a song inspired by the horrible events at the Bataclan in Paris in November 2015, Finn looking terror straight in the eye and refusing to be cowed: “If you want to terrorise me / Make me hate you in return / Love is stronger when it hurts.”
Finn has often been compared to Paul McCartney – famously the former Beatle deferred to Finn when asked how it felt to be the greatest songwriter alive – but at moments like this, he’s closer to George Harrison: a mystic determined to appeal to our better angels. “I think that we can fight and still be friends / Words are hard to control, and some better left unspoken,” he sings in the opening song, Love Is Emotional.
At the top of it all is Finn’s voice. Of all his outstanding qualities, perhaps it’s his singing that’s the most undersold: completely distinctive, unforced and gentle, whispering melodies only he could conjure in your ear. Out Of Silence sees him at his most contemplative and tender, at the most troubled of times. If you missed out on watching this album being born, rest assured the songs will wait for you.
First published in The Guardian, 2 September 2017
NB. Apparently the McCartney story is a myth!