Neil Finn and Crowded House return with a
new album - and a
new drummer. By Mikael Wood
There's no doubting that the highest-profile rock-band reunion at
April's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was Rage Against
the Machine, the fiery L.A. quartet that spent the 1990s pairing
left-wing politics with funk-metal grooves. But Rage wasn't the
only beloved act to take the stage that weekend in the California
desert: Fans of crafty Beatles-inspired pop were also treated to
one of the first shows given in over a decade by Crowded House, the
jangly
New Zealand combo responsible for the 1987 smash "Don't
Dream It's Over."
This month, the band - front man Neil Finn, guitarist Mark Hart,
bassist
Nick Seymour, and drummer
Matt Sherrod (a fill-in for Paul
Hester, who died in 2005) - returns to record stores with
Time
on Earth, Crowded House's first studio album since 1993's
Together Alone. Produced by Steve Lillywhite and Ethan
Johns - and featuring a guest appearance by Smiths/Modest Mouse
guitarist Johnny Marr -
Time on Earth effortlessly picks
up where Crowded House left off. We called Finn recently at his
home studio in
Auckland and asked him how he managed the trick.
Time on Earth started out as a solo album of
yours. At what point did it become a Crowded House disc? I
began recording early last year, but in the shadow of Paul's
passing, Nick Seymour and I had kind of reconnected and developed a
renewed friendship. I thought it'd be great to play music with him,
so we started working on this record together. We didn't talk about
it all through the making of it, but really close to the end, I
took Nick aside and said, "You know, this feels like a band in all
the meaningful ways. What do you think? Should we crank out the old
girl again?" He was thinking the same thing but was a bit afraid to
talk about it.