“Conflicting Emotions indeed, as Tim Finn would soon split the Enz for a solo career. With Tim distracted by his own Escapade, brother Neil and Eddie Rayner rowed harder to keep the band afloat. They succeed in some cases, notably on the beautiful ballads Message to My Girl (though I’m tempted to call it a Squeeze knockoff) and The Devil You Know. But Tim’s overtapped well of ideas and Neil’s overtaxed share of the songwriting meant that second-string ideas like Bullet Brain and Cactus Head found themselves pressed into service. Rayner’s production touch is hardly invisible, with lots of mechnical effects (he’s credited with keyboards and “machines,” if that’s any indication) layered in the arrangements. Sometimes the busy arrangements bury a good idea (No Mischief), sometimes they amplify it (Straight Old Line).” (ConnollyCo.com). The latter is “as fine as fish as you’d find in Time and Tide’s catch” (ConnollyCo.com).

It would be nice to “say the band went out with a bang, [but] it was more of a mechanical clank. Time and Tide and True Colours were great albums, Waiata and Frenzy good ones, but Conflicting Emotions is merely okay. The band replaces emotion with effects, and the prickly-sweet adventures of old become agitated encounters…the subsequent See Ya Round is one worth ditching, so this may be as far as some Split Enz fans are willing to venture” (ConnollyCo.com).