Dad-Pop? : Where do you stand on Crowded House?

Erm, you wouldn't per chance rate them Dr.C? ;)

No, honestly. Crowded House strike me as the kind of band I will end up liking for their high quality song craft (incidentally high quality song craft and dull dad-pop seems like a non-choice to me, har). At the moment I don't like them one bit.

Split Enz: if you're not severe metal (Krokus) or cult soul (Klymaxx), please spell your name correctly. Dud.

I most often listen to them when I write. Unobtrusive, yet catchy, their songs make perfect pleasant background music that you might want to sing along to occasionally.

I would never force anybody else to listen to them, and honestly, I don't know I would want to spend time with some one who considered Crowded House their favorite band. But try to take them away from me and you'll draw back a bloody stump.

Crowded House was hit and miss for me. Together Alone was a really nice album, I thought, but no one else seemed to like it. The rest I can take or leave, but make sure you keep the abyssmal "Chocolate Cake" single the hell away from me.

Now on-topic: erm...nothing to add.

search - 'four seasons in one day'

What can I say? He got it right first time. A real Johnnie Walker / Richard Skinner / Roger Scott / Bob Harris band. Now quintessential boomerised Radio 2 fodder. Henceforth, dud, but not offensively so, just boringly so; they don't bring forward any opinion from me. But, yeah, dud.

Tom is right : hi-quality songcraft and dull dad-pop are indeed the same. although it's funny how 'craft' is sneered at when applied to song-writing, but is OK when it means layering up samples or slaving over a hot turntable. Hardly any good music comes effortlessly, although it sometimes sounds that way. I don't mean Crowded house are any good, by the way.

My football prediction: Sol Campbell to stay at Tottenham, to be joined by Teddy Sheringham, but not Petit. And Spurs to finish about 7th next season. I've a feeling there could be a shock result tonight.

Fulham will be pretty active in the transfer market as well. ;)

But don't you already like 'high quality song craft' (if not the Crowded House variety)? But seriously, won't you still like the things you like now when you're 40? And if not, why not?

I blame Ned. Even if he didn't start it. I know him. He has powers.

Great game. I went for a walk with my daughter when L*****l went up 2- 0 came back it's 3-1, I sit down and before I know it's 3-3. Nice to know there are still games like this one. LFC would have won on penalties anyhow, only the Dutch are worse penalty-takers than the Spanish.

Second up: Tom E, you are wrong to equate 'finely-honed song-craft' with 'dull dad pop'. OK, we could take a detour into Stevie's very good, well-put, and largely unexplored, point about how 'adult pop' might be a good thing - we really ought to take that detour soon. But for the meantime, I'm going to put that aside, assume that we are talking denigration, and say, Tom, for heaven's sake, you are really out of order here. Why is it OK to slag off - en masse, and with no discrimination - songwriters who think for 5 minutes about what they're doing and are interested in how melodies work, when anyone who slagged off DJs, hip-hop producers, Geri Halliwell's publicists, or whatever, would be machine-gunned at 200 paces? And how would you like it if I said something like 'All computer programmers from Oxford are boring bastards?'

OK, refinement of my comments - drawing attention to 'songcraft' is perhaps the parallel of what I was talking about in the pop thread i.e. drawing attention to producercraft. Whether this is a reason to talk more about songcraft or less about producercraft is up to the individual reader.

I've now even written about Lloyd Cole on FT to assuage your ire.

And while I'm not exactly happy with my job, I'm not a computer programmer, so you can abuse Oxford computer programmers as much as you like.

Shocking attitude Tom. First they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I said nothing. Then they came for the freemasons, but I was not a freemason so I said nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists, so I said nothing. Then they came for Dani Behr, and said 'She's over there, hiding in the cupboard'. etc.

Tom:

>>> drawing attention to 'songcraft' is perhaps the parallel of what I was talking about in the pop thread i.e. drawing attention to producercraft.

I think I understand this - in the pop thread you were saying it was maybe a (slightly) bad thing for people to do that, right? In fact, if memory serves, you were saying that it was a way of denying emotion (or rather, a way of talking that didn't really do justice to emotion); so you're saying that talking about song-craft has roughly the same effect?

But then this -

>>> Whether this is a reason to talk more about songcraft or less about producercraft is up to the individual reader

- has me a tad stumped.

Naturally and predictably, I would rather talk more about the former and less about the latter, at least insofar as the latter means the kind of producers that interest you. But to be honest I'm still not sure I understand this comment.

>>> I've now even written about Lloyd Cole on FT to assuage your ire.

You mean FT exists?

>>> And while I'm not exactly happy with my job, I'm not a computer programmer, so you can abuse Oxford computer programmers as much as you like.

Hey, everybody! We can abuse Oxford computer programmers as much as we like! Who wants to start?

There is a bigger issue here, somewhere, about the way that certain ways of talking about music - which concern sound, texture, atmosphere, rhythm, technology, plus contexts and reception - have, on one hand, provided a tremendous enrichment of the critical vocabulary (visible, I guess, in a lot of what people write on FT / ILM), but have also displaced a sense of 'the song' as a unit of attention, or even a belief in 'the song' as an autonomous entity (I think I mean: analytically relatively autonomous from the other things I just mentioned). While I think the enrichment is (like I just said) terrific, I feel out on a limb in terms of conceptions of the song, because in my world 'the song' is still the primary unit of thought about music, and I have what might - probably pejoratively - be called a 'Platonic' sense of it. As I have in part said before, the only alternatives are musicology proper (to which I am inadequate) and earnest lyrical analysis (which I have argued in the past is largely inappropriate and should, indeed, be integrated into a more holistic sense of what's going on in a musical track or situation). So I still think that something is missing from the critical vocabulary.

I need to think this through more.

Mark S, and everybody else, will be unsurprised to hear that I don't know what 'Get Your (Ur, was it?) Freak On' (?) is.

That's the one. It's the other two who seem less keen with that line-up

I love the three new songs on their Recurring Dream best-of, but almost nothing else they did sticks for me. I don't know what those three have in common (different drummer?).

you like those new songs more than "Don't Dream It's Over," "Whispers and Moans," "Better Be Home Soon," etc?

Yes, strange! I like "Don't Dream It's Over" in Neil Finn's acoustic version on the Diana tribute. Maybe Mitchell Froom is to blame.

Huh, those new tracks on the best-of are among the Froom-iest. "Not the Girl You Think You Are" is lovely, but it's pretty much all Optigan. Then again, so is this Neil Finn produced Dave Dobbyn track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20qq1kl2kYg

Oh, I thought he had stopped producing them at that point. I have no explanation then.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought those are Froom productions. I know he produced the second Finn Brothers record, and returned to producing crowded house later. and Tchad Blake I think has always been involved.

Blake engineered the first three, and had co-producer credit with Froom and Finn on the Recurring Dream singles. I'm pretty sure he wasn't involved at all on the fourth album (produced by Youth in New Zealand), or on the "Crowded House II" albums.

Blake did produce the "Finn" album released in the US as Finn Brothers, but didn't work with Froom on the first/second "Finn Brothers" album. (Also NB: the Finn brothers' home demos for what became Woodface finally came out officially on a deluxe edition four years ago.)

Froom has not only produced the upcoming Crowded House Mk III album, he has joined the band as keyboardist, been playing remotely on their lockdown live videos, and moved to New Zealand earlier this year to take part in the world tour starting on Wednesday, in which the band will travel to every country that it is safe to enter and tour.


almost nothing else they did sticks for me. I don't know what those three have in common (different drummer?).

No, Hester came back for those three,* and is even in the videos. His replacement, Peter Jones, only played on some demos that ended up on their b-sides-y comp.

*but! Ricky Fataar played on Weather With You.

Yeah, no Froom or Blake on "Together Alone" or "Intriguer" iirc, but some combination of those two on almost everything else for a while, including the two Finn Bros. albums and Neil's first two solo records. Wow, I didn't know that Peter Jones, who replaced Hester in Crowded House Mk I, died in 2012. Brain cancer.

Even among their stellar catalogue, Together Alone is such a rich, rich gem.

xp

Huh, yeah, Blake even mixed a few tracks on CH2's first album Time On Earth, and co-produced and co-recorded and mixed the Neil & Liam album with Mick Fleetwood on from 2018*.

Together Alone (1994), 7 Worlds Collide (2009 Neil-convened supergroup with Johnny Marr, Bic Runga, Lisa Germano, half each of Radiohead and Wilco etc), and Pajama Club (2011 stoned home-recorded collabo between Neil and wife Sharon) look to be the only published album-length projects Neil's ever done without one of them, since the first collab in 1986. I'd put an asterisk on Time On Earth and Try Whistling This (two tracks produced by Blake, another seven mixed) but still.

*now that Fleetwood is all "I'm pals with Lindsay Buckingham again and want to record with him," and was grumpy about the record company not letting him release several albums of stoner jams with Neil before he got Finn in to replace Lindsay, it'd be hilairs if they formed a Buckingham McFinn while the rest of Fleetwood Mac maintain the rage.

Even among their stellar catalogue, Together Alone is such a rich, rich gem.

Yes it's a bummer that that lineup of classic-era Crowded House (the longest-lasting!) didn't get to make another record, preferably with Youth.

The single version moves the chorus to right after the bridge, so there is that

huh! had no idea such a thing existed. but just listened to the demo version they released on the deluxe version of "woodface" where they do indeed do it that way, and you can hear it as the proper pre-chorus it clearly was meant to be, and... it totally doesn't work.

also, xxxxxxp, i love the close harmonies.

only published album-length projects Neil's ever done without one of them

I *think* neither Froom nor Blake had anything to do with "Dizzy Heights" (which is Dave Fridmann) or "Out of Silence."

I completely forgot those existed (never listened to them or the CHmkII records) (Liam produced Out Of Silence)

The CHmkII albums are pretty good, though there's nothing that really distinguishes them from Neil Finn solo albums. I think the first two solo Neil albums are excellent, but his subsequent albums have been really, well, yeah, loose and stoned. They come across more like R&D than albums to me.

I think this breaks it down to an extent btw:

1986-2007: nine albums + Recurring Dream, eight with at least some Froom and/or Blake
2009-2017: five albums, no Blake/Froom
2018-2021: two albums, one with each.

(the last would have been out in 2020 but for pandemic. He's kept close to an album every two years average for 34 years, and those Fleetwood jams would have tipped it.)

Yes it's a bummer that that lineup of classic-era Crowded House (the longest-lasting!) didn't get to make another record, preferably with Youth.

agreed. Hester was such a wonderful presence when they played live, too. And Youth really seemed to loosen Neil up.

(I specifically meant the Finn/Hester/Seymour/Hart version of CH, that held together for nearly two and a half years - a wild record for the original version of the band,* given that Finn seemed to (accurately**) regard Hester as the only important member of the group, and either get annoyed with, or be offputting to, anyone else who hung around.)

Yes, Hester rules the live albums both as co-bandleader and as chatty goofball. I used to keep a cassette cued in the radio on Friday afternoons, after he left the band, because he'd be the standby guest on a nationally-networked drive-time show, driving in to talk nonsense if a proper celeb couldn't be bothered to turn up that close to the weekend.

*(that lineup had a trial in the first half of 1989, then ran from late '91 til Hester left in April '94, with Hart becoming the first actual full-time fourth member since 1985, in '92.)

** (though the version with Eddie Rayner on keyboards c. 1987-88 was THEE BEST EVER, he probably wouldn't have fit as well into the jammier live style later, or gelled with Youth)

That live record that came with the Recurring Dreams CD is the only Crowded House I ever properly heard, but it's pretty good, this version of Sister Madly where Hester makes a mistake and derails the song completely is pretty amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz7Wvd4oBHA

I used to have a bunch of live recordings, which are tons of fun. My fave was probably this one, the last night of the Woodface tour:

https://archive.org/details/crowdedhouselondon9nov1991

I like the new album, more than the last two CH albums.

for the life of me I dont understand the issues expressed with "weather with you" up above. Yes it's sung in harmony...so? Yes the prechorus doesn't lead immediately into the chorus...so? That makes it more interesting and less predictable to me. The thing is still an earworm!

The harmony clutters up the song.

no, you clutter up the song

i like the lush vocal feel of that song

it's not an elliott smith 4 track thing

On some days I do find the close harmony kind of annoying.

for the life of me I dont understand the issues expressed with "weather with you" up above. Yes it's sung in harmony...so? Yes the prechorus doesn't lead immediately into the chorus...so?

as the person who introduced the great prechorus controversy, i agree with you! i just found it weird and interesting and worth a mention. i think it's great. i don't understand the issues w/the harmony either.

I was watching a 60 Minutes Australia piece on the band, and it was ... kinda stupid. Like, they keep talking about the magical chemistry of the new line-up. Well, duh. Nick has been there from the beginning, Mitchell Froom has produced or played on half their recordings, and Liam and Elroy are Neil's kids, so ... yeah. And then they keep referring to this as some sort of grand reunion, dismissing the previous reunion - which lasted five years and produced two albums - as "short lived." It has, however, assuaged a longstanding regret of mine, though. I interviewed Neil some years back, and I was struck by what a relatively dull subject he was, not at all what I expected. I figured it was my fault. But the more interviews I read and see with him, the more I realize that, no, it's really just him. Like, he dutifully does the rounds but (perhaps understandably) finds the whole thing something of a chore.

I like the new album, more than the last two CH albums.

I completely bounced off the last lineup (without ever putting in any effort, Hessie 4 eva), but this really does sound like a band. For obvious reasons, of course, but it does feel like it was worth sacking the last group for, instead of indulgent nepotism.

xp - that's something the core trio of the original band had: a spark between the personalities, and a dedicated jester, to make their press more fun than Neil's "I like to smoke pot at home with my wife and write songs, and there's not much to say about that" vibes

Yeah, otm. And re: the new lineup, I think it helps that Liam is really, really talented, as a writer and player, and not just a (more or less) hired gun like Mark Hart was. And Froom has been so integral to the band's sound that it makes sense that he would be, well, integrated into the band. Elroy ... I don't think Crowded House needs a particularly flashy drummer at this point, just a guy to keep the beat. I remember when Neil was touring his first couple solo albums, his group featured some ringers, like Lisa Germano and Sebastian Steinberg, but the drummer was just a guy doing what he needed to do to propel the shuffling lo-fi Froom/Blake studio vibe.

(btw, those first two Finn solo albums featured some cool contributors, from the aforementioned to Wendy & Lisa and Jim Moginie and, I just noticed, Tony Allen!)

Drummers on those tours were (or included) bloke from Radiohead, bloke from Creation band Arnold, and... Liam Finn.

Pretty sure it was none of the above! Liam would have been 19, so ... maybe, but I'm sure I would have remembered him being introduced. It was definitely not Phil Selway. Looks like Arnold toured with Finn in the UK in 1998, so he would have met their drummer, but no idea who that was. Made extra hard to search when your band name is a person's name.

Here's the Finn band at the time, 2002, doing one of my fave Finn songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHmdD4Qhr7c

I think the other guy in that lineup was Shon Sullivan, aka Goldenboy, who also played with Elliott Smith.

Arnold bloke was their lead singer too, I think, and returned for at least the 2001 UK tour.

Goldenboy was a frequent band member around that time, yeah, as was Johnny Marr.

Saw Finn in 1999 and 2000 and think Steinberg / Germano were in the group at least once, and am sure Liam and Jim Moginie were in 1999, but can't remember who drummed (though I think there was some instrument-swapping in '99).

(Also saw Neil & Tim with Nick Seymour and Don McGlashan backing them around 2005, and teenage Elroy miiiight have been drumming?)

((Also saw the Violet Femmes as a five-piece including Mogine in the '00s.))

Don't think Marr (or Selway) did more than the one-off live show or maybe two, but I could be wrong. I know Marr co-wrote a song on the first Crowded House reunion album.

Marr toured multiple countries, but played less than half of each show.

(At least partly to stay under the radar, so he could just enjoy playing and people wouldn't be buying tickets to see him, as you'd never know if he was actually getting up in that city.)

re interviews, several times I've had the impression that Neil has anger issues - if so he keeps a tight lid on it, which I speculate makes him a dull subject, but I remember stories about outbursts at audiences who talked during songs etc.

OK, listening to the new one again, it is of course absolutely lovely stuff, and it does sound pretty organic, but it doesn't really sound like Crowded House, or at least how that band used to sound. Nor does it really need to. When Finn put out those first two impeccably weird and knotty but of course still super well crafted solo albums I always felt it was him shaking off the shackles of commercial expectations. Not that he really had any at the point, or, you know, expected them, but his whole mode of writing seemed to shift, imo, applying his knack for melodies and hooks to stranger sounds and structures within the singer-songwriter pop mode. I like a lot of the two comeback Crowded House albums, but they felt like they were splitting the difference to me; in fact iirc at least the first one actually *was* intended as another Neil solo album at one point. Anyway, this one is much more relaxed, easing into the idea of a band in spirit even if it doesn't necessarily recall the specific band in name. Which is to say, a gifted songwriter who, yeah, sounds like he'd be just fine staying home to smoke pot with his wife, but if you need him to write some amazing tunes, he's down with that, too.

I'm not familiar with Liam's work, is it worth delving into?

I really liked his first solo album I'll Be Lighting, and loved the one-man-band shows he was doing around then. But then, like his dad, he kept doing all these one offs and EPs and collaborations and I got distracted.

*checks discography* I haven't listened to a whole new Liam record in twenty years *ossifies promptly*

2000 Betchadupa EP by Betchadupa
2001 The 3D EP by Betchadupa
2002 The Alpabetchadupa by Betchadupa
2004 Aiming For Your Head by Betchadupa
2007 I'll Be Lightning
2009 Champagne In Seashells EP by Liam Finn and Eliza Jane
2010 Barb by Barb (band including Connan Mockasin and EJ)
2011 FOMO
2014 The Nihilist
2018 Lightsleeper by Neil & Liam

lol, so I wasn't wrong that pretty much everything he did was under a different name or with different people.

He also plays and sings and writes (and sometimes produces) on most of Neil's records this century, and is on 20 Crowded House Mk II live albums from 2007 (inc two in Chicago)

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/neil-finn-interview-crowded-house-dreamers-are-waiting-fleetwood-mac-1180529/

I saw him with Crowded House here, because he was in the band at the time. Also opened.

That Rolling Stone interview is actually pretty good for once.