Neil Finn - Out of Silence (2017) Hi-Res

One element that's tied together Neil Finn's solo career is how every album, no matter how excellent it may be, has worn its labor on its sleeve. By the time he got to 2014's dense, ambitious Dizzy Heights, he was seemingly spending as much time on the production as he was on the songcraft, so the directness of Out of Silence comes as a bit of a shock. Alternately austere and lush, Out of Silence largely lacks guitar and drums, opting for stately arrangements of piano, strings, and voice. This is a big change from the electronic shimmer of Dizzy Heights, but Out of Silence is immediate in a way that its elliptical predecessor wasn't. Much of this is due to Finn recording the album live in the studio in a swift four-hour session that was live-streamed on the Internet, but that story, as intriguing as it is, threatens to reduce Out of Silence to the realm of a gimmick when it's better seen as a course correction that shifts attention back to the fundamentals of Finn's compositions. As grand as these lush arrangements can be, they never draw attention to the sound of the recording; they're there to accentuate and enhance the songs. Such transparency has the effect of highlighting Finn's songs, which are on the whole moody and meditative, alternating between reassurance and provocation. Certainly, Finn is in an unusually political mood -- "The Law Is Always on Your Side" and "Terrorise Me" are empathetic protest songs with an angry undercurrent -- but that signals how singularly focused his writing is here. His sweetness and melancholy are as palpable in the composition as they are in the performance and, ultimately, that's why the live-in-the-studio recording of Out of Silence cannot be dismissed as a stunt: such a simple, yet kinetic, production is the only way to do justice to songs are rich as these.