Crowded House – Crowded House Review

An obsession clicking into place after their Glastonbury performance, getting your grubby hands on copies of Crowded House work was no major difficulty. Neil Finn remains revered by his contemporaries and their self-titled album is a booming example of the sound Paul McCartney loves. He wishes he could write music like him and to be fair to Macca, The Beatles did not have the guts to write a jangle pop powerhouse where Finn decimates the music of the times with a bold vocal range. Listen in and lament the fact Crowded House are perceived as having nothing more than a couple of hits. They are so much more than Don’t Dream It’s Over, which just happens to be buried early on in their self-titled debut. Crash through opener Mean to Me, a blur of agonised vocals on a stretch of disjointed and out-there instrumentals which consider the fundamentals of pop rock.  

International hits will make or break a band. It is the difference between the luxury of playing all your hits or saving them for the encore. Don’t Dream It’s Over may stick out as a tonally different piece of an otherwise upbeat and freeing album, but it is not the sum of its joyous, saxophone-laden parts. Lost in space and hopeless of making it back on World Where You Live is hauntingly isolated for a song using its percussion to hide its heartbreak under the steady, joyous beats of soft rock. Born from the ashes of Split Enz, Crowded House bursts through and showed little sign of stopping. A hit song steadied them and diving deeper into the album finds a strong element of knowing calamities and how to deal with them. There is a slightly rugged appeal to their jangle pop, to the rising occasions found on Now We’re Getting Somewhere, as though the bubble had finally burst.  

Dedication in the absence of a devoted lingers on the jangle nightmare punch of Love You ‘Til the Day You Die. Flickers of Talking Heads’ new wave boom linger on the vocal strengths Finn displays here and it is of only the highest quality. His conviction adds the extra layer so many other artists lack. Something So Strong roars to life as a piece of surprise wonder, a near-forgotten powerhouse given the runaway first single slot. Listen on for days on end in this lucid state of barely living. It is hard to keep your eyes peeled and open enough as you enter hour thirteen of a working schedule. But the punchy little containers of soulful, instrumental drags and spots of flickering, whirring Australian rock are enough to keep the brain whirring away. If you haven’t wept to Don’t Dream It’s Over have you ever lived? Yes, but some character-building backed by Crowded House never hurt.  

We all feel the burn and the experiences of Can’t Carry On bring them to life. Wrap yourself in the moments of fear and desperation – the long haul is never ending and it’ll be too late to make any of those responsible changes. Crowded House burns with a white-hot fury through their debut record. You may not hear it on the first few spins but listen in on those punchy riffs, the jagged guitar work which punctures the sleek production and more of-the-time tracks like I Walk Away. Still, the consistency is there, proving once and for all the need for pop music with an edge. A bitter tone, an angry bite and all of it comes through with the satisfying joys of a Finn vocal lead. Crowded House is a wonderful piece, blurring the line between joyful compositions and grounded heartbreaks.