CONFLICTING EMOTIONS

Slickly produced, inoffensive white-boy funk, dreamy pop bordering on muzak - someone's slipped the wrong album into the SPLIT ENZ sleeve. No; though notionally still part of the band, TIM FINN has wandered off in search of Greta Scacchi and a solo music and film career, leaving the rest of the band without sufficient eccentricity to sound like old-style ENZ. This album says more about what was to become CROWDED HOUSE than it does about SPLIT ENZ, despite the slightly weird 'Bullet Brain and Cactus Head', with 'Message to my Girl' being the most obvious precursor to the gorgeous, superslick pop that the NEIL FINN-led CROWDED HOUSE would produce. The rest of the album slips past in a blur of heavily-disguised mediocrity. Of most relevance is the fact that both FINN brothers had saved their best tracks for other projects: TIM scored with the pleasant 'Fraction too Much Friction', while NEIL already had his mega-hit 'Don't Dream it's Over' in his bottom drawer. There's nothing here approaching that. This is the sound of a band in terminal decline.