I admit, it took a long, long time for this one to grow on me, but it finally caught up with me and I like it a lot. It’s nowhere near as good as Tim’s 1989 album, but it’s better than Big Canoe and shows a lot of maturity. Mostly somber, the album does have its more energetic moments though even these are sometimes deceptive, including “In Love With It All”, with its allusions to Tim’s (rocky?) relationship with brother Neil of Split Enz/Crowded House fame, and “Hit The Ground Running”. Incidentally, Neil Finn himself duets with Tim on the former (which sounds suspiciously like a Woodface outtake) and on “Strangeness And Charm”. By far the best pieces here are “Persuasion” (a very Bruce-Hornsby-esque ballad), “Many’s The Time (In Dublin)”, In Your Sway, and “Walk You Home”, all of them songs with an adult 
perspective on youthful longings. If he can maintain this level of thoughtfulness in his content and avoid the attempts to be funky (a la his Smokey Robinson sound-alike falsetto “I Found It”), Tim could easily burst onto the adult contemporary scene and relieve that genre of the constant domination of Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and any soundalikes thereof. It would be a welcome change.
- Hit the Ground Running (4:38)
- Protected (5:24)
- In Love With It All (3:21)
- Persuasion (3:53)
- Many’s the Time (in Dublin) (4:27)
- Funny Way (2:54)
- Can’t Do Both (4:51)
- In Your Sway (4:49)
- Strangeness and Charm (3:24)
- Always Never Now (3:57)
- Walk You Home (3:37)
- I Found It (4:16)
Released by: Capitol
Release date: 1993
Total running time: 49:31
