7 Worlds Collide, spearheaded by Crowded House’s Neil Finn, is a loose collective formed with friends, acquaintances and contemporaries coming together in a studio to hash out some songs. It’s a nice concept, though not an entirely unique one, the most recent comparison (relatively speaking, considering its decades-long gestation) being Peter Gabriel’s Big Blue Ball. Not coincidentally, Tim Finn is a member in good standing of both, but The Sun Came Out trumps Big Blue Ball in one important aspect: consistency. Because of Gabriel, and his Real World label’s world music emphasis, the tracks bounced wildly from a pop tune to a chant, to an African tribal rhythm and back to a pop tune, all good in their own right but incoherent in the record’s preset context.
The Sun Came Out has a rock & roll through-line and, therefore, is an easier listen. The pedigree is outstanding as well, since you’re not just getting more Finns than you can shake a stick at, but you’re getting a chunk of Radiohead, a large part of Wilco, and some Johnny Marr for good measure. One of the early standouts is “Run in the Dust,” a Marr contribution with some nice, moody guitar textures, but the set spans two CDs or four full vinyl sides. By the sheer weight of the thing, the listener instinctively begins to cherry-pick tracks. For the CD or iTunes set, that’s fine. For the vinyl collector, not so much. (more…)

Bad news for all the fans who thought that this, finally, was Knopfler’s return to Dire Straits-style rock and roll: Those days are gone, and have been for awhile now. Get Lucky, Knopfler’s debut for the Warners heritage label Reprise (ugh — “heritage” — it has all the cache of a Revolutionary War reenactment troupe) is tonally more of a cousin to his
I say this with only a slight bit of embarrassment; The Cars’ debut album is my most-purchased title ever. I received it on vinyl one Christmas (way back when humans licked scum off the rocks for sustenance… 1978?), wore that out, repurchased it a year later, bought the CD at the dawn of the digital era, rebought the Rhino remaster because that initial release was horrid, and finally it has come to this — the Mobile Fidelity half-speed mastered vinyl edition. Can you imagine?