With the heavy lifting of the
Crowded House reunion out of the way,
Neil Finn is able to settle into comfortable craft on
Intriguer, the band’s sixth album.
Intriguer isn’t as self-consciously weighty as
Time on Earth --
Finn is not tackling mortality in the wake of the death of his longtime friend and bandmate
Paul Hester -- but it’s also not as hazy as
Finn’s pair of solo LPs. In tone and timbre, it’s closest to the second
Finn Brothers album, the ruminative
Everyone Is Here, but it lacks the reflective undertow of that 2004 album; it may be subdued, but it’s not reveling in its melancholy, it’s riding a gentle wave, swaying from song to song. Sometimes the tempo gets slightly heated -- “Inside Out” works a nicely grinding guitar riff, “Saturday Sun” pulsates to an electronic rhythm -- but the album doesn’t command attention so much as it teases it. This light touch suits
Finn’s songs; he’s favoring subtle craftsmanship over immediate hooks, so it only fits that the mood of
Intriguer is soothing, something that pays off great dividends upon close listens. It may not be flashy but it’s sturdy and expertly honed, reflecting
Finn’s craftsmanship on a song-by-song basis but holding together better as an album than any
Finn project in recent memory. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine