Latest CD releases reviewed

Everyone Is Here Parlophone/EMI
****

Who else could it be except those kindred Kiwi spirits, Tim and Neil Finn? As the respective people behind Split Enz and Crowded House, something would have to be very wrong indeed if this record - their first collaborative studio album in almost 10 years - arrived in less than sparkling form. Worry not, then, fans of excellent, mature and reflective pop music, for this 12-tracker is a cracker. Lead single Won't Give In sets the tone: structured tunes, familiar yet not (The Beatles with a twist?) and words of singular wisdom dominate. If it sags ever so slightly in the middle section, the final five tracks (All God's Children, Edible Flowers, All the Colours, Part of Me Part of You and Gentle Hum) romp home with such a mixture of glorious melody lines and ruminative thoughts that you're left wondering why it took the Finns so long to get back together again. - Tony Clayton-Lea

Piano Works Sanctuary
****

A talented and quietly ubiquitous back-room boy, Craig Armstrong and his strung-out orchestrations have worked wonders for Massive Attack, Madonna and U2, and produced the pleasantly plush and majestically overwrought score for Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. While both solo albums to date, The Space Between Us and As If to Nothing, have been spacy, widescreen and dramatically ethereal, Piano Works is Armstrong revisiting previous triumphs in a Satie-like hush of solo piano and ever-so-slightly treated effects. His touch is still evocative, though with much more mannered subtlety. It helps that so many tracks perfectly acclimatise themselves to such treatment: Armstrong's handling of both Massive Attack's Heatmiser and Weather Storm allows new textures to come bubbling to the surface, while there's a placid authority to Leaving Paris and Satine's Theme. www.craigarmstrong.com - Jim Carroll

Frozen Orange Merge Records
****

Frozen Orange is a record of such effortless loveliness that it sounds like something conjured in a dream. What it actually represents is the summit of Dunedin native David Kilgour's 25-year quest for indie-pop Babylonia. So richly melodic as to be initially overwhelming, the album divides between passages of poignancy and breathless beauty. The bittersweet air stems perhaps from Kilgour's enforced tenure in the alt.rock slipstream - his "day job" band The Clean are ranked consistently as footnotes in the annals of Kiwi rock. As revenge letters go, this is a poisonously sweet proposition, with choruses to swoon over and arrangements of shimmering delicacy. An otherworldly journey from the sublime to the meticulous. www.mergerecords.com - Ed Power

Kindess Reekus Records
**

Clawing out from the rubble of collapsed Dublin bands Rollerskate Skinny, Chicks and Johnny Pyro, this "indie supergroup" emerges hell-bent on musical revenge. There's a pied piper element to The Radio's over-elaborate chamber pop, rushing us into hypnotically repetitive choruses and thence oblivion. Lead single Remember Me Remember You (Nena Kerner meets Phil Spector) sets the blueprint: Annie Tierney's spiky vocals warmly cosseted in a vague lushness of pizzicato-this, arpeggiated-that, harmonised the other. But there are defences against such pep offensives. Almost every song is about two minutes too long (apart from Archangels, which only becomes interesting in its last two minutes), leaving this début catchy but empty, churning eventually into the resistible swoon of Hang On. Like everything here, the song aims to be anthemic, but simply disappears up its own refrain. www.theradio.ie - Peter Crawley

A Northern Country Catchy Go Go Records
**

You can tick off a good few singer-songwriter boxes here: melancholy, evocative, brooding - check. Nick Drake, Richard Hawley, Red House Painters, Low, Bill Callahan - check. A little bit dull, samey and one-dimensional at times - check, check, check. This is the third album by the young Galwegian, following his 1999 début, A Strange Kind, and 2001's When You Are Here You Are Family. Once again, Crowley is joined by cello player Kate Ellis, who adds plangent (forgot to tick that one) strings to One Hundred Words for Snow, Dark Anvil Skies, Photographing Lightning Strikes and Great Salt Lake. The taut, restrained drums, bass, harmonium, violin, piano and found sounds provide a desolate space for Crowley's chilly monotone and tightly plucked guitar to glide through. Airy but often insubstantial. www.adriancrowley.com - Kevin Courtney

Something Ilk Regal
****

When your dad has composed The Brendan Voyage and the theme from Ballykissangel, you might feel a little under pressure to stand out from the crowd. But Dubliner Cathy Davey has seemingly effortlessly established herself as a unique new voice in alternative rock with a début album that's in a class of its own. Recorded with Blur producer Ben Hillier, Something Ilk blends edgy indie (Come Over, Clean & Neat), freaky cabaret (Trade Secret, Swing It), twisted lounge (Hammerhead), tribal folk (Old Man Rain) and dark ambience (Sugar), all held together by Davey's dancing voice, which searches through all the nooks in the music to uncover insistent melodies and intimate lyrics. Sometimes you imagine you've heard echoes of Kate Bush, PJ Harvey or Beth Gibbons, but Davey's singing is too agile to pin down, and the songs too likeable and individual to damn with faint comparisons. www.cathydavey.com - Kevin Courtney