(#552: 6 July 1996, 2 weeks)
Track listing: Weather With You (Single Version)/World Where You Live/Fall At Your Feet/Locked Out/Don't Dream It's Over/Into Temptation/Pineapple Head/When You Come/Private Universe/Not The Girl You Think You Are/Instinct/I Feel Possessed/Four Seasons In One Day/It's Only Natural/Distant Sun/Something So Strong/Mean To Me/Better Be Home Soon/Everything Is Good For You
The sense of a parallel and slightly hazier world prevails throughout the more intelligent Antipodean rock of the second half of the eighties, and of the year 1986 in particular; think, for instance, of the Go-Betweens’ “Twin Layers Of Lightning” or the Triffids’ “Tarrilup Bridge,” each bearing a heat so hazy it could make pizzeria store fronts seem like tablets from heaven. The haze of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” may have a lot to do with Mitchell Froom’s keyboards, but there is a subtle commitment in Neil Finn’s writing and performance which doesn’t have to underline the fact that this is an anti-capitalist protest song. It doesn’t make a fuss but quietly stands in the corner, incrementally making a difference.
That last sentence fairly sums up what Crowded House have been trying to do in the subsequent half-lifetime. On the surface their music appears, or sounds, reasonable and approachable, and therefore possibly "centrist" - they are routinely described, or dismissed, as "dad rock," which reminds me of how odd it is, or isn't, that there does not seem to be such as thing as "mum rock" - and their approach certainly differs in superfluous kind from the band's arty predecessor Split ENZ (the capitalisation is important), though that may be down to Crowded House being essentially Neil Finn's project, whereas Split ENZ was principally his brother Tim's concept.
Still, the implicit menace felt through things like "I Got You" pervades in the unusually hazy keyboard lines of "Fall At Your Feet" and the politely gloomy confessional of "Into Temptation," the latter underscored by what sounds like a Mellotron. Though superseded by subsequent compilations, in particular 2010's two-CD The Very Very Best Of Crowded House - which includes their best song, "Chocolate Cake" - Recurring Dream marks an inadvertent temporary memorial, as Neil Finn decided to split the band up shortly after its release. Drummer Paul Hester had messily left in 1994, and the grudging "with Paul Hester" credit on the album suggests some residual grudges.
Yet this is proudly unworldly music, and inevitably this has something to do with New Zealand; without wanting to venture into dreary generalised pseudo-philosophical travelogues about the edge of the world, etc., it is true that the two islands' best bands sound as though at a diplomatically defiant distance from the mainstream of things, as though music filtered through to them in imperfect, faxed photocopies. The work of The Verlaines, for instance, can be interpreted as a manically sped-up punk variant on Crowded House's characteristically angular structures - 1993's Juvenilia is basically an inversion of the subject matters of Together Alone - and we see glimpses of The Chills - rest in peace, Martin Phillipps - in particular during the lengthy vanishing-into-nothingness of "Private Universe."
One could even - well, I would - suggest that the (im)perfect counterpoint to Crowded House would be Dunedin's The Dead C, where emotion and adventure finally overcome politesse and reserve; you really cannot appreciate Woodface (bearing Tim Finn's obvious presence in mind) without listening to Trapdoor Fucking Exit ("Hell Is Now Love," "Helen Said This").
If I'm focusing on artists recording for Flying Nun Records, it may be due to the fact that Neil Finn (together with his wife Sharon and another undisclosed business partner) has held a 25% shareholder stake in that label since it was bought back from Warner Music in 2009. But it enhances the totality of understanding Crowded House's music.
Recurring Dream is a straightforward singles compilation; four songs from each of their (then) four studio albums plus three new songs (for a proposed new album which was ultimately abandoned). Much of it will be accidentally familiar to you, yet there are bits of sonic business which gently steer the band away from being unambiguous easy listening; Tim's ad libs of "Aye!" and "Hey!" on "Weather With You," the free jazz trumpet solo which takes "Mean To Me" out (played by a member of a session band known as the "Heart Attack Horns"), the disconcerting electronic FX which announce "It's Only Natural." "Pineapple Head" is a delightul R.E.M.-style roundelay which could theoretically go on for always.
I'd say that, of the four original albums, Together Alone is the most ostensibly adventurous - the debagged post-baggy rage of "Locked Out" plus the aforementioned "Pineapple Head" and "Private Universe" - and Temple Of Low Men the most secluded (Neil seems be singing "Better Be Home Soon" while angrily crouching in a far, not-yet-dusted corner of the studio). Of the three new songs, "Not The Girl" is an explicit White Album tribute - far more Lennon than Neil's customary McCartney-esque deliveries - while "Instinct" buries its supremely catchy chorus in a sandy morass of indecision. The band did reassemble - minus Hester, who took his own life in March 2005 - in 2007, and it is encouraging to see that their more recent work, up to and including this year's Gravity Stairs, demonstrates undiminished imagination. And if you listen to 2010's Intriguer - particularly songs like "Inside Out" - you'll discover healthy evidence of the band being structurally influenced by...The Chills. Easy listening has never quite been Crowded House's thing, unlike meticulously-refined subtlety.
