The eighth album from Split Enz, Conflicting Emotions, is released. Despite the catchy single “Strait Old Line”, the album doesn’t sell as well is the group’s previous three albums (perhaps a side-effect of lower exposure due to the previous album’s lead single being artificially strangled by radio programmers). This is the last album to feature founding member Tim Finn; his younger brother Neil elects to keep the band together to continue recording. 
Tim Finn’s final album as a member of Split Enz in the studio is a bit uneven. Such Enz classics as Neil’s “Strait Old Line” and the well-known “Message To My Girl” – both revived on the later ENZSO album – came from this album, but there are very electronic and almost disco-esque tunes such as “Bullet Brain And Cactus Head” that I usually skip over. The underlying problem I have with Conflicting Emotions is the predominance of sequencers, drum machines and other synthetic elements – sure, the band had used them before, but not to this degree. To balance this, however, there are two lovely songs that are worth finding, both of which are primarily piano-and-vocal pieces: Neil’s typically cryptic “The Devil You Know” and Tim’s melancholy farewell “Bon Voyage” – appropriately enough, the last song on the album and Tim Finn’s last hurrah as a member of Split Enz.
- Strait Old Line (4:01)
- Bullet Brain & Cactus Head (3:59)
- Message to My Girl (4:04)
- Working Up An Appetite (4:07)
- Our Day (4:58)
- No Mischief (4:14)
- The Devil You Know (3:36)
- I Wake Up Every Night (4:46)
- Conflicting Emotions (4:30)
- Bon Voyage (4:04)
Released by: Mushroom
Release date: 1984
Total running time: 42:19
1993 music review by Earl Green