29: Crowded House

Published in

Music of the 80s

5 min readMar 13, 2022

30 Years Later

Due to circumstances mentioned recently, I have no comic ready! But I’m completely smitten with the new record by Crowded House, and watching videos and reading about the record. I love this feeling — as rare and surprising as any human crush.

I don’t “write reviews” much, for reasons recounted in past newsletters. But if you’re interested in this band, here’s a look at this new record (and why I listened to it).

No One Should Write a Review Without an Accompanying Piece About Their Day

To be responsible and clear, my own relevant circumstances — the ones I am conscious of and can name — include:

I loved this band while they were active, in the late 80s and early 90s. They’re great players, Neil Finn’s an excellent songwriter and singer, and I love their ability to sing together, sort of like the Beatles did — perfectly, but without drawing attention to it.
Their second record Temple of Low Men was one of those life-saving records for me in 1988/89, the end of high school. I find something profoundly engaging about the combination of chops, arrangement, and the contrast of these pretty sad, pretty dark (but rarely melodramatic) lyrics. I loved driving around listening to it at night.
They ended on a high with their most accomplished record, Together Alone, almost 30 years ago.

I do not usually entertain these “return of” records. It is my experience that very few bands are better later and out of context, and believe it much more likely that said band’s comeback efforts are based on a lack of money or attention than on their having anything left to add.
For example: Loverboy put out a record in 2007 called Just Getting Started — isn’t that amazing? I just checked online, and the follow-up record to that was called Revival (2012). These records can be delusional.

Okay, I’m overstating it to try and be funny. I’m just saying it’s important to me that you all know I’m no sucker for reunions. As an example: this same Crowded House put out a record in 2009 that I never even tried to hear.

So Why Did You Check This One Out?

Honestly, it was this hilarious image of the band, which is the pic on Spotify and their website. Doesn’t it look like a Lord of the Rings movie? Like a Disney TV spinoff Hobbits Adventure?

Crowded House Are Hobbits

THAT got me thinking about how hilarious it is that elder Neil Finn really does look like a Hobbit,

and Crowded House (and Split Enz) were always amusingly unusual — perhaps even a little elfish -

and they’re from New Zealand — well, I got swept away in the idea that Crowded House were playing the actual Music of the Hobbits and had somehow broken through in human pop music civilization. I wondered if the band knew this was how the poster appeared, or whether it was some really funny coincidence.

Still Truckin’

Also, lately I have been searching up bands I stopped paying attention to, just cuz — and it’s interesting to see who just kept going. Juliana Hatfield, I was surprised to learn, has apparently never stopped. She’s recently done tribute albums that are kind of fun (one of songs by The Police and one of Olivia Newton John’s). It says something when someone sticks at it, and I am finding that pretty interesting as I age and age and age.

So anyway, I put on this new album, called Dreamers Are Waiting, and absently listened to it while I surfed the internet. And at the end, I put it on again. It’s been about a week now, and I’m in danger of completely ruining it for myself through overplay.

So About That Review

It’s really good. It sounds like Crowded House, but isn’t mired in trying to recreate anything. Neil Finn’s never stopped writing and recording, and often collaborates with great artists, and that all shows. He already wrote perfect pop, but these songs are as inhabited and as full as the music of a thoughtful 60-something musician’s ought to be. They’re smart. There are no moments where a thing goes on for too long — each measure is interesting. The arrangements work on phone speakers and with real headphones — they’re lush and engaging. And Finn’s singing has only gotten better with age — it’s the singing of someone who’s been happily singing his entire life.

This is not quite the same band as back in the 90s: late founding member Paul Hester’s position on drums is filled by one of Finn’s adult sons; another son plays guitar. Nick Seymour remains on bass (he’s a tasteful, tuned-in player), and Mitchell Froom — once the band’s producer — plays keyboards. I would love to go see this band play live, if they played a small enough venue — which is unlikely (see below).

Playing with Fire

“Playing with Fire” is a pretty gentle song about the end of humankind with an amazing, understated-reaction refrain that could only be written by someone with some real years under his belt:

I’ve never seen such a thing! 
Never seen such a thing...

There are a few political songs here, in the same gentle tone of this band. “Whatever You Want” slams the populist phenomenon with some direct language:

It should be shouted from a mountain at the top of your voice: This is not right! 
This man is a fake!
But they will follow him down to the edge of a cliff
And if he tells them to jump -
They will jump right in

But if Crowded House were ever a part of any movement, it was the movement that The Beatles belonged to, with a one-word mission statement/goal/mantra: LOVE. This record does not break this tendency.

Without being stupid hardly ever, Crowded House has made consistently great records about love and its many aspects — for almost 40 years now. That’s a wonderful thing.