Album Review: Liam Finn - The Nihilist

With the combination of album opener, Ocean Emmanuelle and the title track, The Nihilist sets an early agenda of primitive beats and trilled-out vocals, always just a little removed from reality in their trippy wonder. Then, Snug As F**k goes full-blown on the same ingredients to sound like Magical Mystery Tour-era Beatles, if they took a few more drugs. Things start to deviate with Helena Bonham Carter, as the piano-pop bleeds into taunting backing vocals, spacey synths and a brilliant balance of snark, cynicism and sarcastic sunshine. All this is just to lull you into a hypnotic numbness before Finn slaps you back into reality with Burn Up The Road, a glorious assault of every instrument he could find in the studio that day.

From the safe guitar-rock of his turn of the century band Betchadupa, to his one-man looped musical collages, to his three previous solo albums, Liam Finn seems determined to never be pinned down by genre, categorisation or his own past efforts. That eclectic refusal to stick with one sound for too long comes a little unravelled on the messy 4 Track Stomper and Arrow, but the odd choices and experimentation pay off a lot more often than they fail.

I don't know if the title is hinting at anything Finn sees within himself or if it's meant sarcastically. But these songs are too well crafted – and the album as a whole is too much of an expertly executed big picture – for nihilism to have ever played a part in its creation.