IMAGINARY KINGDOM BY TIM FINN IS A COMPLETE SHOCKER

SPLIT ENZ was absolutely huge back in the early 80`s in Australia and New Zealand, in Australia the band even outsold the classic COLD CHISEL album EAST in 1980 with their album TRUE COLOURS. To be honest, i never knew what all the fuss was about, with only a few exceptions i really hated SPLIT ENZ (laugh). Up against the tough and rugged blues based pub rock of COLD CHISEL the glam, synthesiser pop of SPLIT ENZ just didn't measure up, just my personal opinion of course. SPLIT ENZ fans who end up reading this will most probaly chase me down on Facebook and Twitter now (laugh). After SPLIT ENZ dissolved around 1984 and brothers NEIL and TIM FINN went their seperate ways (mostly), Neil of course would go on to achieve superstardom with the more contemporary band CROWDED HOUSE, Tim carved out a moderately successful career and also made an appearance on the third CROWDED HOUSE album WOODFACE, which was released in 1991. It's not hard to discern that sibling rivalry and egos, not to mention having two very capable band leaders in the same band, had a lot to do with Tim's muted presence in CROWDED HOUSE and why he didn't even last long enough in the band to see out the world tour to co-incide with the release of WOODFACE. The most famous songs in Tim's solo arsenal are two off his very first solo album in 1984 - FRACTION TOO MUCH FRICTION and the white commercial soul of MAKE MY DAY. Fast forward twenty two years and TIM FINN released in 2006 what i can only describe as a convoluted and unconvincing album titled IMAGINARY KINGDOM. I dont like it at all, the first song COULDN'T BE DONE is okay i guess, sounds very 'Beatle-ish', and the second track STILL THE SONG is pleasant enough, but the rest of the album is meandearing and meaningless trash, unmelodic self indulgency on the part of Finn. The epic cover artwork of the album certainly doesn't accurately reflect the lacklustre music contained on it. The song COULDN'T BE DONE might just be decent enough to keep the old SPLIT ENZ fans happy.