visit
stack.net.au20
jbhifi.com.auDECEMBER
2016
N
eil Finn never made a
secret of his smash single
aspirations. Nailing "the
soundtrack of the times" has been
the drug since he scored
I Got You
,
his first hit with Split Enz back in
'79. With
Don't Dream It's Over
he
reached a higher stratosphere with
a phenomenon he later called "the
song that empathises", an anthem
for the united states of tingling
scalp and wistful sigh.
Sure enough, flipping through
the original four Crowded House
LPs of '87 to '94, it's hard to think
of another pop act of the last 30
years with a greater hits-per-side
ratio. Between
Mean To Me
and
Don’t Dream
, the self-titled debut
goes four singles deep, as men
with deep voices and runny noses
used to say in FM programmers'
meetings, before drawing breath.
Temple Of Low Men
boasts a
classic radio tune literally every
second track
–
three per side
in the old money
–
from
I Feel
Possessed
to
Into Temptation
to
Sister Madly
and
Better Be Home
Soon
.
Woodface
is just rude, with
Chocolate Cake
,
Fall At Your Feet
,
It's Only Natural
,
Weather With
You
and
Four Seasons In One Day
lined up on the A side like there's
no Plan B.
Even sinking in faraway beach
sand and psychedelics,
Together
Alone
manages to lasso seven
singles, from the raucous
Locked
Out
to the trippy
Pineapple Head
to the sublime
Private Universe
–
with the blissful
Distant Sun
still
to come.
But for all the inevitable
CROWDED HOUSE
As the seminal rock group conclude their epic Opera House shows and find
themselves inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame, Michael Dwyer looks over the
recent vinyl reissues of Crowded House:
Crowded House
('86)
,
Temple Of Low
Men
('88)
,
Woodface
('91)
,
Together Alone
('93)
, and
Afterglow
('99)
.
greatest hits compilations, the
Crowdies' prodigious leader
has always been an old-school
believer in the integrity of the
unexpurgated vinyl statement:
nothing less than a two-
part manifestation of "divine
symmetry", he opined while
launching his latest solo album in
2014.
"In the same way a three-
minute pop song is a good
amount of time to lose yourself in
something wondrous, a 40-minute
experience is a really nice amount
of time to exercise your brain in a
different way," he suggested.
So slip your grey matter into a
sleek lycra ensemble for the
less travelled disco byways of
Can't Carry On
and
Tombstone
.
Make your angsty bed on the
psychologist's couch of
Kill Eye
and
Mansion In The Slums
.
Go straight to Hell with a sausage
dog in the playful amble of
There
Goes God
and recline with the
sadly missed Paul Hester on
Italian
Plastic
. Then howl at the Kare
Kare moon with
Black And White
Boy
and tickle those hard-to-reach
muscles with
Fingers Of Love
.
The bonus round from the
band's first rush is
Afterglow
, the
swag of unreleased gems that
bounces between the unabashed
romance of
I Love You Dawn
to a
seriously spooky thrum through a
nylon-strings-and-harmony take of
Private Universe
.
Oh yeah, and no fan of this
band's surreal cartoon aesthetic
will need to be reminded that
there's only one way to appreciate
Nick Seymour's darkly sumptuous
cover art. Hint: it's not in a fiddly
little 12cm booklet suitable for
losing under the coach.
ALSO AVAILABLE:
The post-
Hester reunion albums
Time On
Earth
and
Intriguer
.
(Universal)
Temple Of Low Men
1988
Woodface
1991
Together Alone
1993
Afterglow
1999
Crowded House
1986