"Don't like groove? Well, call the cops," sings Neil Finn on Dizzy Heights' sunny title track.
Finn's third solo album finds the Kiwi singer-songwriter making no apologies for sidelining his pop smarts and plumping for songs constructed around groove and experimentalism.
It's not quite Sly and the Family Stone but Dizzy Heights best moments - Flying in the Face of Love, Better Than TV and Strangest Friends - are built around wife Sharon's running basslines and son Elroy's solid drumming as well as some lush production.
Finn's effortless pop sense in Split Enz and, particularly, in Crowded House, is renowned. But it's great he's prepared to take risks after three-plus decades.
Finn said recently that songwriting is a process of "slip-ups and revelations" which includes equal parts of "art, inspiration, skill, skullduggery, bluff and fraud".
Dizzy Heights embodies all the above.
Where Finn's voice overreaches for a falsetto on Divebomber his high register comes off more convincingly on Recluse. Perhaps the lumbering Animal Vs Human is Dizzy Heights' weakest track but the ruptured electronics of White Lies and Alibis is refreshingly abstract and benefits from the stamp of producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev).
Dizzy Heights shows an artist keen to avoid cruising in middle age and prepared to push beyond his strengths - which is the album's real joy.
You can really believe Finn when he sings: "If there is a chance that you wanted to dance, wanted to sing, don't die wondering."
* Neil Finn's Dizzy Heights (Lester Records/Kobalt) is out now.
