Tim and Neil Finn take opposite directions in their latest albums.
There are different ways to grow old musically. Tim Finn, who turns 60 next year, appears to have chosen the path of gentle reflection. His latest album, The View Is Worth the Climb, opens with The Everyday, one of four songs he wrote with his wife, Marie Azcona, in which he considers the contentment that can be found in the ordinary. “By any measure of happiness, every day is all there is” goes the chorus, Finn’s delivery radiating a Zen-like calm.
And at the close of the set you will find Keep Talking, in which Finn counsels a friend on the brink of self-harm. Again, the tone is reassuring and warm, which goes for the album as a whole.
In many ways it is a logical continuation of The Conversation, Finn’s 2009 set, which evoked the mood of a dialogue between old friends. But although lush and lovely, thanks in large part to the sonic massage of American producer Jacquire 
King (Tom Waits, Kings of Leon), The View Is Worth The Climb never startles. With lots of strummed acoustic guitars, electric ones that twang classic-sounding rock lines, and melodies that might be echoes of earlier, more urgent Finn songs, the disc defaults to the familiar. It’s a place where, at this point, Finn seems to feel at home.
By contrast, it is not until several tracks into Pajama Club – the debut disc of the new trio formed around Neil Finn and his wife, Sharon – that there is anything you might identify as a Finn signature. It is all party beats, fuzzy synthesisers, breathy male murmurings and female voices that respond with sexy, surprising stuff like “Tell me what you need/I’ll do anything to you”, and “I wanna race ya/I’m a racer”.
The Pajama Club sprung out of the couple’s private after-dinner jam sessions, the kind you have if the kids have grown up and gone and you are the country’s most successful pop songwriter with a studio full of toys. With Sharon on bass and Neil drumming, dance grooves evolved into songs, gaining further embellishment with the addition of Sean Donnelly on synths and production.
At different times these stomping tracks, built from the bottom up, recall the Talking Heads in their disco discovery phase, or Donnelly’s own inventive and underrated recordings as SJD.
It is evident Neil Finn has found it liberating to discover a context in which he is not expected to write another Don’t Dream It’s Over, and the sense of freedom and fun is infectious. Even so, Pajama Club may be less of a breakthrough for popular music than it is for Neil Finn.
THE VIEW IS WORTH THE CLIMB, Tim Finn (ABC/Universal) PAJAMA CLUB, Pajama Club (Lester Records).