It feels a bit backwards for this to be the debut album of a man who has already won Album of the Year and Producer of the Year at the Grammys, and who will play with the headline act at next summer’s Glastonbury. Finneas O’Connell is the older brother of Billie Eilish, an equal creative partner in the teenage icon’s two huge albums and the new Bond theme.
As the less glamorous man off to one side on the keyboards, he recognises that he gets plenty of the good stuff in this lifestyle and nowhere near as much of the bad as she does, but his album title and his song Happy Now seem every bit as ironic as Eilish’s Happier Than Ever. On The 90s, he sings: “You could sign me up for a world without the internet,” rueing the fact that fans have spread the address of their childhood home. On Medieval, he’s already worrying about what happens when he’s no longer “the new king”.
On those two songs you can hear some of the unsettling electronic stylings that have put the 24-year-old in such demand as a producer for others including Justin Bieber and Camila Cabello. But much more of this collection is in the classic, piano-led singer-songwriter mode, especially the Bennie and the Jets pulse of The Kids Are All Dying. He keeps his warm voice clear and untreated, the better to hear all the self-doubting lyrics. It’s high quality stuff, but inevitably, his sister’s more daring work leaves him in the shadows again.
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