STACK December 2016 Issue No. 146

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20

DECEMBER

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