The Top 20 Albums of 2011 - #18 - Liam Finn: FOMO

The Top 20 Albums of 2011

#18 Liam Finn: FOMO

Words by Dirk Calloway

Preface: You're reading the third entry in a daily series, focused on reviewing one of 2011's best albums each day. Over the next 3 weeks, we'll work our way up to the 'Best Album of 2011'. You can catch up on missed entries by clicking this link here.

Let's get this out of the way now... 2007's I'll Be Lightning is, to me, an absolute classic. At the time I swore it was the Album of the Year, and I'm still fine with that decision. Its arrival hit me like, well, a lightning bolt. It screamed "see, we can sing in kiwi accents but make some damned good music while we're at it." Liam Finn's live shows became legendary for their loop pedal creativity, that would build and build into a monstrous, drum-heavy, crescendo. In the years since, he's performed on Letterman, added a variety of musicians - most importantly, Eliza-Jane Barnes - to his line-ups, released an EP, and made a sort of indie-NZ supergroup called BARB. Fair to say, he's been a busy boy and he's been keeping himself interested musically.

FOMO feels like the proof of all that musical pudding. This is not a follow-up to a prior album; it's a fresh entity unto itself. FOMO is an album that stands on its own two feet, without prior precedent needed to survive, nor any mention of its creator's family tree. All this is as it should be. Finn's well into his second decade as New Zealand's wildest indie-rocker. Coupled with Betchadupa, BARB and his solo work, he's put on shows that I'll look back on with fondness to my dying day. This is not a "sophomore record" at all; I've lost track of how many records he's appeared on now! No, this is the work of a fully-formed artist, who's quite clearly grown-up, wiser and more experienced than any of his previous albums showed him to be. Check out this fantastic live version of his song Roll of the Eye below for an idea of what I mean:

Wow huh? How nuts does that get? In lesser hands, it might have been a naval-gazing song about stifled creativity. Handled by Finn, it's capable of a broader dynamic than that. I feel like FOMO presents songs that are mined to their full potential. They explore the surface, then delve deeper inside to find pockets of riffs that are unexpected, but gratefully received by the listener. Liam alluded to this in the publicity material released around the album's launch. He frequently mentioned that his relationship with producer Burke Reid was deliberately collaborative, and that the resulting songs were different to how he'd have made them if he were left to his own devices. Of all the songs on FOMO, that difference in approach is perhaps the most obvious on its thundering middle-track, The Struggle:

It's one of the best sounding pop songs I've heard in years... provided it's played on a good set of speakers. Sadly, it sounds absolutely horrible on a bad set of speakers. I heard it in a tinny set of speakers in a cafe a few weeks ago and all I could hear was the effects, the handclaps and the sawtooth waves of the keyboard. All traces of the thumping bass line and vocals were gone. Likewise, play it through your iPod's earbuds (and to be fair, that is how the majority of music is probably consumed these days) and you'll end up hitting pause or turning down the volume. It makes me sad to say it, but I'd love to hear a remixed and remastered version of FOMO. I'd really like to hear a mix that present's only Finn's vocals and the core group of instruments to the listener. They're strong songs, they withstand scrutiny, and they've been played passionately by their creator. The music video for Jump Your Bones makes this point abundantly clear:

Perhaps the swirling mix was concocted to add more conflict to an album that is explicitly about inner conflict? If so, cool. Point well made. The blurry album cover also ties to this theme, the sound effects and crazy keyboards do too, and that acronym of a title makes sure you know it. FOMO is an album that screams "we're at home, and we're damned uncomfortable about that." It's an album explicitly about New Zealanders' deep and abiding cultural cringe. I dig it. You should dig it out of your local record store / online retailer.

Return tomorrow to find out who made 2011's 17th best album. They're an American band that, briefly, redefined what rock music should sound like. As always, if you want to see other posts in this series, click here.