Liam Finn - Fomo

He’s been touted by some as the next Elliot Smith, and having toured with the likes of Wilco and The Black Keys, kiwi singer Liam Finn has a fair amount of hype surrounding him, and rightly so. On ‘Fomo’, the follow up to 2007’s ‘I’ll Be Lightning’, he begins to find his voice.

The finest moments on the album are when Finn stops trying to create overly complicated songs and goes back to basics. The best examples of this are pop gem ‘Cold Feet’, a soul tinged story of love and loss, and the gloriously melodic ‘Reckless’.

There are times when ‘Fomo’ misses the mark, the sense of urgency created on songs such as ‘The Struggle’ and ‘Roll of The Eye’ are not maintained, leaving parts of the album - ‘Neurotic World’ in particular - feeling somewhat flat.

The instrumentation is impressively full bodied. With buzzing chainsaw guitars and blaring synths, the album doesn’t shy away from bold sounds. Occasionally this does feel slightly cluttered, but reassuringly it never feels detached and cold as some one man solo albums can.

It’s clear that while ‘Fomo’ may not be the strongest album Finn could have produced, it is a solid pop offering from a talent that with any luck will keep getting better with time.