JULY 1 2007
AMERICANWAY 73
TimeonEarth
startedout as a soloalbumofyours.
At what point did it become a Crowded House
disc?
I began recording early last year, but in the
shadowofPaul’spassing, NickSeymour and Ihadkind
of reconnected and developed a renewed friendship.
I thought it’d be great to playmusic with him, sowe
startedworkingon this record together.Wedidn’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.
Whatwas thenext step?
Well, onceNickand Idecid-
ed that it felt right,we rangMarkHart inL.A. because
wewanted him tobe part of it again aswell. Then the
three of us agreed that if wewere going to be a band
inmore thannameonly, themost important thingwas
anabsolutelybrilliantdrummer. Sowe started toaudi-
tion drummers.
Neil Finn and CrowdedHouse returnwith a new album — and a new drummer.
ByMikaelWood
How long had it been since you’d auditioned any-
one?
I’ve only done it one other time in my life, and
that was when I was in Split Enz [before forming
CrowdedHouse].We auditioned drummers and found
Paul Hester, so it was effective then, and I trusted it
this time. We actually cast the net a littlewider than
last time. In fact, once it became known thatwewere
looking for a drummer, we had a lot of inquiries and a
lot of peopleputting their handsup;weendedupplay-
ingwith about 50drummers infive cities.
How’d you decide to gowithMatt?
He had awon-
derful presence in the room, and he played the drums
just right. He also didn’t know a lot about Crowded
House. In some ways, he was free of any burden of
living up to anything; he just came in andplayed really
unself-consciously. It sounded like something fresh.
There’s an overall freshness to
Time on Earth
that
differentiates it froma lotofreunion records.Many
times, the music of reunion albums gets bogged
down in an attempt to uphold a band’s legacy.
It
feels like that tome aswell.Maybe itwas thewaywe
came upon it; weweremakingmusic beforewewere
thinking about being a band, you know? We weren’t
burdenedby it.
If that’s not what you were thinking about, what
about the music felt Crowded House-ish?
The way
Nick plays bass. It’s quite characterful; I hadn’t really
realized it until we started recording together, but
he kind of gets things wrong in a really cool way. He
works everynoteandeveryfill of everypart. It excited
me, and I thought that it sounded likeaband. Also the
nature of thewaywe recordedwithEthan, who’s very
much into people playing live on the floor. We over-
dubbed, andwecertainlyusedmodern technology, but
the approach toward recordingwas very much along
band lines as well. It has an element of performance
about it at every level, I think.
An element of spontaneity.
Right. You can make
things soundbeautiful in a recording, but togive them
the amount of spark that you need is a tricky thing.
There’s no doubting that the highest-profile rock-band reunion at April’s Coachella ValleyMusic andArts Festival was Rage
Against theMachine, thefieryL.A. quartet that spent the 1990s pairing left-wingpoliticswith funk-metal grooves. ButRage
wasn’t the only beloved act to take the stage thatweekend in theCalifornia desert: Fans of craftyBeatles-inspiredpopwere
also treated to one of the first shows given in over a decade by CrowdedHouse, the janglyNewZealand combo responsible
for the 1987 smash “Don’t Dream It’sOver.”
¶
Thismonth, the band— frontmanNeil Finn, guitaristMarkHart, bassist Nick
Seymour, and drummerMatt Sherrod (a fill-in for Paul Hester, who died in 2005)— returns to record storeswith
Time on
Earth
, CrowdedHouse’sfirst studioalbum since 1993’s
TogetherAlone
. ProducedbySteveLillywhiteandEthanJohns—and
featuring a guest appearance by Smiths/ModestMouse guitarist JohnnyMarr—
Time on Earth
effortlessly picks upwhere
CrowdedHouse left off.We calledFinn recently at his home studio inAuckland and asked him how hemanaged the trick.
DoDream
