Crowded House 'Distant Sun'

Chart Peak: 19

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Neil, Nick, Mark and Paul are Crowded House... 'Distant Sun' was the first Top 20 hit from the new Together Alone project which has already been hailed as a worthy successor to the million-selling Woodface album.

Well, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that Together Alone is actually an even better album than Woodface, indeed the best Crowded House album of all. It's certainly better-sequenced. This is curiously the only one of five UK hits from the album to appear on a Now album, and more remarkably it's arguably the fourth consecutive folk-rock track on Now! 26, which I'm pretty sure is the only such run in the whole series. Although they have released a lot of genre-based spin-offs recently, so maybe it's only a matter of time until we get Now That's What I Call Folk-Rock.

Anyway, 'Distant Sun' is one of those songs that  has a slightly odd place in the canon: it's not the first song anyone would think of when the subject of Crowded House came up, and I never think of it as one my favourites of theirs. And yet whenever I listen to it, when it comes up on shuffle on my MP3 player or gets played on the radio, I can't resist it, and find myself either singing along or trying very hard not to, according to circumstance. In fact I've just had to put the album on now while I'm writing this post. As I've mentioned before, they're a band who have an undeserved MOR reputation in some places but are actually much more subtle than that, with Neil Finn's melodies often developing in surprising directions and evoking complex moods: often unsettling but also leavened with a comforting human warmth. It's difficult to parse exactly what 'Distant Sun' is actually about: possibly a tempestuous relationship, possibly caring for somebody with a mental health problem (both topics that appear elsewhere on the album), possibly neither. Either way it feels like it's all centred around the key lyric in the middle eight; "I don't pretend to know what you want, but I offer love." There's something deeply adorable about the combination of resignation and hope in that.

Musically, it's a more conventionally accessible track (which is presumably why it was picked as lead single from the album). The structure is fairly conventional, adorned by chiming guitars (presumably from new member Mark Hart) and some of Nick Seymour's usual quietly superb bass-playing. The only real flaw is that it lacks an ending and seems to drift into a fade. Oh and the video's a bit rubbish too.

Also appearing on: 21, 22, 23, 34, 35
Available on: Together Alone

Crowded House 'It's Only Natural'

Chart Peak: 24

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A comedy sound effect, but we stay in Australasia for the final track on the first disc. 'It's Only Natural' was the fifth single from the UK breakthrough album Woodface and their last hit to feature Tim Finn; he'd already left by the time the single was released, as the video shows. As well as co-writing the song, he's especially evident here thanks to the shared vocal with his brother; I presume it's the combination of high and low voices that my dad had in mind when he said this reminded him of Squeeze.

Like much of the best Crowded House material, it sugar-coats a potentially dark lyrical message, delivered by a protagonist whom you can "read like a book that's fallen down between your knees", yet the effect is more pathetic than scary. I presume that's what the Finn brothers intended all along, they seem like nice enough boys really. It's possible to ignore that aspect anyway, so impressive is the craft of this track, the chiming guitars, the subtle vocal arrangements. In fact, the only problem is that slightly drifty fade which makes for a bit of an odd end to the first disc of the album.

Also appearing on: Now 21, 22, 26, 34, 35
Available on: Woodface

Crowded House 'Instinct'

Chart Peak: 12

YouTube

For possibly the first time in the history of this blog, looking this track up finally prompted me to replace my cassette of the best-of album where this track first appeared with a download. So you can probably guess which way this is going to go.

'Instinct' was one of a few tracks tentatively slated for a fifth Crowded House album, but ultimately became one of the three new tracks on the Recurring Dream best-of, their last recordings with original drummer Paul Hester. For about a decade they were their last recordings of all, since Neil Finn announced around this time that he was folding the band. And on this track, you can almost hear why. Not that it's anything other than good, but it does hint that Finn was looking for a new direction; there are traces of the mildly more modern production sound that he'd explore as a solo artist. Even his vocal is pushed beyond his typical range.

Even after all these years, I've never really been able to grasp what the song is supposed to be about. Parts of the lyric ("Laughing at the stony face of gloom", "Your instinct can't be wrong") sound like they might belong in an upbeat fist-punching anthem, but as usual the music resists this, presenting an oddly bewildered, slightly bleary-eyed confusion. It's this darker side of Crowded House that is often overlooked, rather to the detriment of their reputation, though presumably not their bank balances. 'Instinct' is surprisingly worthwhile for a new song on a best of album, if not up with their finest work: I prefer the other hit from the album, 'Not The Girl You Think You Are' but that never made it to a Now album.


Also appearing on: Now 21, 22, 23, 26, 35
Available on: Recurring Dream: The Very Best of Crowded House