(Interscope)Eilish’s celebrated producer sibling abandons his adventurous instincts on his largely forgettable debut
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Finneas O’Connell has crammed a lot into his brief career. A bit-part role on Glee was quickly usurped by co-writing and producing songs for younger sister Billie Eilish, a creative switch that has so far earned the 24-year-old eight
Grammys and further production work for the likes of
Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato.
Though he has been hailed, alongside Eilish, for morphing pop into more avant-garde shapes, much of O’Connell’s debut album plays it relatively straight. He’s a lovelorn acoustic troubadour on opener A Concert Six Months from Now, while the worthy, overblown Hurt Locker recalls the strained emotion of The X Factor’s James Arthur. The cringe-inducing The Kids Are All Dying (“How can you sing about drugs, politicians are lying”), meanwhile, is Elton John’s Benny and the Jets as covered by the Script.