Send "Liam Finn " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pastemagazine |
 When Liam Finn sings, “I knew I couldn’t have you / right from the very start / and that’s why you see right through me / the boy who ate your heart,” during FOMO‘s earliest moments, he sounds humbled, but also resigned to his place in an existence often fraught with anxiety, obsession, maladjustment. It’s a good look on him, the Kiwi songwriter and son of Crowded House/Split Enz music vet, Neil. FOMO isn’t as long or excitable as Finn’s 2007 debut, I’ll Be Lightning, nor is at as aggressive or raucous as his live show, but that suits him just fine. After all, a good pop record, at the end of the day, is still a good pop record.While FOMO contains the same breezy hooks (“Chase the Seasons”) that earned Finn comparisons to Elliott Smith a few years back, and certain songs here aren’t a far cry from early Shins (“Reckless”), as a whole, his third proper release—including the 2009 collaborative EP with Eliza-Jane Barnes, Champagne in Seashells—simply oozes poise. For every uneasy transition from gorgeous melody to noisy breakdown (“Roll of the Eye”), there’s an ominous, inspired synth (“The Struggle”) with Finn holding court over the top of it, like a seasoned songwriter....full text |
| Nzherald |
| Liam Finn's 2008 album I'll Be Lightning not only proved the prodigal son was an iconic solo muso in his own right, it was also jolly likeable. For the past three years young Finn has been working to one-up himself. Not an easy task when I'll Be Lightning was not only chipper and effortlessly melodic but also tingled the tastebuds of those who listened carefully. In order to create a new set of heart-thumping, throat-lumping, affecting songs, Finn headed deeper within himself, daring to expose his frustrations, disappointments and most notably, his deep-set "Fear of Missing Out", a debilitating condition that kids these days commonly shorten to the acronym, Fomo. Although lyrics might suggest that, sitting in little windswept New Zealand, Finn is developing a fear of missing out on the big wide world, his songs suggest he has not missed out on a full, worldly life thus far. An album as tumultuous and stab-in-the-guts poignant as Fomo can only be born out of a stream of life's hurdles. And in cramming love, lust and loneliness (as well as a little looniness) into a tightly packaged 10 songs spanning just 36 minutes, Finn has been forced to abandon some of the laid-back abandon of his very accessible debut album. While Fomo will still appeal to fans of folky pop, it tampers with its rhythms and harmonies, and moving in waves of mirth and moroseness, packs more of a punch than I'll Be Lightning....full text |
| Popmatters |
| I’d love to tell you that Liam Finn is a songwriter of rare intuition and that his craft completely wipes away any small, nagging doubts about nepotism. I’d also love to recommend his album FOMO to a crowd of young listeners who suddenly find themselves giving a damn about the music scene in New Zealand thanks to Flight of the Conchords and the recent Crowded House reunion. And I’d certainly love to see Liam Finn continue to be taken seriously as an artist, even though his father is quite possibly one of the great songwriters of the southern hemisphere, and that FOMO will hold up against future scrutiny when people stop and reminisce about junior’s climb to the top. But then I listened to the album. The golden moments are few and the bronze ones are many on FOMO, an album that offers much in the way of adequate, serviceable pop that stands just on the edge of “good enough” without going much further. It’s almost earnest in the way it doesn’t deliver, as if the whole sophomore slump thing were obligatory. FOMO is an acronym for Fear of Missing Out. There are tiny clues leading to this eagerness, if not an overall sense of it. In the course of ten songs over 36-plus minutes, Liam Finn feels a “sense of urgency” and confesses that he’s “tired of cold feet” and has “not got the patience”, but looks back to observe that “time tipped over”. It’s all the making of coming-of-age stuff without any crux, any moment of realization. There are a few times where Finn can be pretty straightforward, but they nonetheless feel vicarious. He even says so in “Reckless” when he sings “I adore your reckless attitude”, one of the more succinct melodies to be found on FOMO. The closet thing that he has to an angry side can be in a vocal-shredding performance on “The Struggle”: “To bed without your supper, you suffer all your own.” “Little Words” takes a sad and cynical view on the ease of modern communication, or voyeurism, or both as the song’s narrator regrets losing a picture of a girl in her underwear from his computer. No big loss, because he then shakes it off by saying “you’re pretty much dead to me”. Oof. What FOMO lacks in lyrical direction and/or poetic license it surprisingly struggles with to make up for in pop melodies. It’s not that Finn’s songwriting is bad or instantly forgettable, it’s that nagging feeling that these songs did not come about through a natural songwriting process but through something more obtuse and methodical. Finn sings the title of “Don’t Even Known Your Name” with much timidity, something that he’s beyond considering how, if you’re not paying close attention, you may mistake him for his dad. Nonetheless, it’s the kind of song that aims for breezy pop but lands in somewhere more disposable. So does “Cold Feet”, though Finn’s singing is far more confident this time. Still, the chorus, with its four-count snare and far-reaching melody, comes across as a buildup leading to just more of the same....full text |
| Popmatters |
| When Set Your Goals made the jump from Eulogy to Epitaph for their sophomore effort, This Will be the Death of Us, they separated themselves from the pop-punk crowd; combining saccharine sweet melodies with aggressive hardcore is a fine tight rope to walk, but it’s one that the San Francisco sextet did well. The positively received disc and their exhaustive touring schedule led to the much anticipated release of their third album, Burning at Both Ends. Unfortunately, the promise set forth on Death of Us has not come to fruition. The problem is not that much of the material on Burning at Both Ends is bad. On the contrary, there are several solid tracks and almost no terrible ones. A good portion of the disc, however, is just plain mediocre or leaves you with a feeling of musical blue balls. For example, the promising and blistering melodic hardcore opening of “Exit Summer” bleeds into a blah, too pop by half-chorus. Nostalgic posturing litters the disc, including tracks with lines like “I always want to feel this young” and a song about losing one’s virginity (“The Last American Virgin”). The Bay Area rockers do their own I Love the ‘80s episode, dropping references to Van Halen, Punky Brewster, Kiss, and Friday the 13th in “Product of the ‘80s”. The boys remind us just how old they are pointing out they grew up without DVDs, MP3s, or plasma screens. Can you imagine?! Some of the album does capture the magic from Death of US. “Trenches” combines a catchy, crunchy riff with the uplifting vocals of Jordan Brown and Matt Wilson. The song also boasts the strongest of the truisms on the album: “Nothing comes for free, can’t put a price on feeling satisfied.” Solid guitar and vocal interplay anchor the infectious “Certain”, and despite its emo-ish lyrics, “New Year’s Day” displays SYG at their best, featuring punky yet polished guitars and Brown and Wilson’s mid-range verses and crooning choruses. Even still, none of the tracks reach the pop-hardcore fusion of “The Few That Remain”, “Equals”, or the accessible ferocity and social consciousness of “Gaia Bleeds (Make Way for Man)” from Set Your Goals’ previous release....full text |
| Rocksound |
| This keenly-anticipated third album is Set Your Goals’ poppiest to date, with the rougher melodic hardcore ridges slightly sanded down. This isn’t to say they’ve morphed into The All-American Rejects; the galloping punk, chunky riffs and gang vocals are all still present and correct in the likes of ‘Exit Summer’, opener ‘Cure For Apathy’ and ‘Illuminated Youth’, while ‘Happy New Year’’s bitter farewell to 2010 is about as saccharine as cold coffee. They’re back in irresistibly anthemic form, with just the right blend of punk attitude and pop genius. With ‘Burning At Both Ends’, the Bay Area sextet have further underlined their second-to-none pop-punk pedigree....full text |
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