Crowded House is back

Peter Green has not performed live or has he been hardly seen since 2014.

 

It didn’t work when they tried it before. Neil and Tim need to be on equal footing if they do something together, and Crowded House is Neil’s band.

No reason he couldn’t guest of course.

 

Didn't work in the sense that neither brother enjoyed it, but the one show I saw was great. And "it's only natural" is probably my all-time favorite C H song.

 

Just hope the studio offerings do the CH name proud.

 

I'm really conflicted by all of this. It really raises difficult questions about what a band actually is. For me, it's about a core group of people that only exist together in that circumstance. Of course, the definition of what constitutes that group is the sticking point. Having seen Neil (and Tim) with Nick on stage, that grouping can and does exist outside of CH: it's Neil with Nick guesting. Had Time on Earth been issued as a Neil Finn solo album with Nick playing bass, I wouldn't have instinctively thought "well, it's really a CH album". It's only when Mark Hart joins that it becomes CH. And the decision to fire him to accommodate Mitchell Froom doesn't seem like the kind of decision a band would take when one member goes off the rails.

More to the point, Neil's solo career has always been about offering something different to Crowded House: different collaborators, different musical styles. To bring his family in blurs that boundary to the point where it begs the question, what is the point of Crowded House? Objectively, this new iteration is no different than any other in the sense that it's a perfectly valid one. But the acid test is: when I look at the group photo, do I see Crowded House? And the answer, at the moment, is No. I see Neil and a solo touring band that just happens to feature Nick.

 

Great, thoughtful post. I would imagine the point is to do what Fleetwood Mac just did... use the most recognizable band/brand name available to the rights holder (in this case, Neil and his presumed ownership of the Crowded House name) in order to book the biggest shows in the biggest venues. It's disappointing in certain respects, but it's music biz 101, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I'm really looking forward to whatever studio work emerges, and if the tour comes to town, I'll absolutely go. If Neil Finn's in town, I'm going, not matter the guise.

 

Not seeing Crowded House with Paul Hester is one of my major concert-related regrets. Hope they tour the US too. What a fantastic catalog of songs!

 

I don't think it's that much of an issue anymore. The last Neil Finn solo show I saw was actually in a bigger venue than the last Crowded House show.

 

I'm not sure I can explain why, but I'm very disappointed in the decisions that have been made by Neil here. I just can't accept Liam and Elroy as being part of Crowded House. It also seems weird to me for a 60-year old to want to spend that much time with his immediate family; I guess as someone who has always prized close friends over relatives, I just can't relate. While I've respected Neil for making music with his sons, I feel like that music should stand separate from Crowded House and not be integrated with it. I think Neil needs a creative non-"safe space" in order for his best work to emerge. I can't see his boys challenging him or pushing him in the way that non-relatives would.

I've bought Elroy's album and Liam's albums (and have seen the latter in concert) and, frankly, I can't see that they share much in the way of musical sympathy with Crowded House and I don't feel like the contributions that either can make would be on the level of what Mark Hart or even Matt Sherrod brought to the band. From what I've seen, there's a sort of winking, send-it-all-up, ironic humor in the work of the two boys that I find completely at odds with the sensibility of the best Crowded House music, which is darker, more earnest, and far more sophisticated.

I will certainly give the new music a chance and would go to see a show if a tour reaches my corner of the globe, but I'm not too optimistic right now.

 

Hopefully that’s the end of Fleetwood Scab.

 

To me, it's just all about Neil and the songs.

 

This debate mirrors a similar Antipodean argument I’ve been having with myself over the Go-Betweens up through 1989 vs. the rebooted duocentric aggregation that Grant McLennan and Robert Forster later called “the Go-Betweens.”

 

I saw Crowded House both with and without Paul and, I have to say, I enjoyed the Paul-less shows better. Quite probably this is because Paul was a major distraction during the final tour he did with the band (supporting Together Alone). He was clearly unhappy and used the stage to work out some of his frustrations, which took the form of lengthy, show-stopping (not in a good way) "comic" rants. I kept thinking "couldn't they be using this time to play some more songs?" while he was stalking about the stage, taking off his shirt and rambling about this, that, or the other thing.

I've certainly seen enough live clips from the earlier CH tours where Paul was brilliant, both in terms of his performing and his humorous anecdotes and byplay with Nick and Neil. By 1994, however, that seemed to be long gone.

 

I don’t think they should have gotten back together after Hester died. The 2 records released since then have been their 2 worst and I saw the opening show on the last world tour and didn’t enjoy it at all - and Neil’s questionable moustache didn’t help either...

 

I don't know what their long-term plans are, but at the moment, they're just playing some shows. If that's all it is I don't know that much challenging or pushing is required to play Crowded House's greatest hits at a festival.

I've just heard Liam's first album and the one he did with Neil, but... I didn't especially find that to be the case. If he was like that on stage, well look at how Crowded House's shows used to be. Liam and Elroy worked on Out of Silence and you couldn't ask for a more sombre Neil Finn project.

 

Mark's a good musician but he was only a member of Crowded House for one of their four classic albums. I don't see him as essential to their identity.

 

My favourite band extant ...

It's also the vehicle for my favourite type of Neil songs; he apparently thinks along the same lines, too -- to me, nothing in his recent solo work is a patch on Intriguer or Life On Earth (the latter being a desert island record for me. Transcendent music.) I don't really go to shows anymore, but a new CH album would be an automatic buy. Hope this tour isn't just a busman's holiday ...

 

Per Neil's statement, looks like something new from CH is part of the plan:

"New music is on the way but we will be giving the old songs much love and attention for the shows upcoming. I know the best is yet to come."

 

Ah ok, not paying enough attention.

I wouldn't be concerned about Liam and Elroy being too jokey, I'd be concerned about them not being fun enough. Since Neil started doing all this stuff with his family his music has become rather diffuse and moody.

 

Wow so much negativity here around Neil bringing in his sons..ironic given the history of Tim Finn bringing his 17 year old little brother Neil to the Split Enz line up. That worked out fine, and run turn led to Crowded House.

 

They should see if Lindsey Buckingham is available to play guitar.

 

The announcement states that they are writing and planning to record new music. Also, the few festival appearances have now expanded into a full blown European tour. This is beginning to look less like a couple of festival shows and more like the next era of Crowded House.

Liam's first album is the most Neil-like, and the collaborative album he did with Neil is the least Neil-like album Neil has ever put his name on. On stage, Liam played a background role when I saw him play with Crowded House. I was more referring to the sensibility that he and his brother appear to share being at odds with Neil's more serious one. It's true that the old CH displayed that in their live shows, but I think that Paul and Nick brought a very different sort of humor to the proceedings than what I suspect Liam and Elroy will. Good point about Out of Silence, which is the one Neil Finn-related release since Intriguer that I've thoroughly enjoyed. Let's hope that any new Crowded House material sounds a lot more like Out of Silence than Lightsleeper or Dizzy Heights.

 

I find the sibling relationship to be less problematic than the parental one when it comes to working together.

 

And Liam is older than Neil was when he made Together Alone... they’re not bringing a couple of teenagers along.

At least Neil hasn’t replaced Nick with Sharon!

 

What projects of theirs display this sensibility?