Crowded House: Gravity Stairs (2024)
For more than four decades, Crowded House leader Neil Finn has been on an evolving, winding journey. Crowded House’s mid-Eighties hits like “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Something So Strong,” combined with albums like Woodface and Together Alone, set the standard for the period’s erudite jangle-pop while always pushing the band’s art forward.
That creative spirit brings Finn and his Crowded House bandmates to Gravity Stairs, their first new release since 2021’s Dreamers Are Waiting and eighth overall. Produced by the band with Steven Schram, the album shows Crowded House in its current incarnation — Finn, Nick Seymour, Mitchell Froom, and Finn’s sons Elroy and Liam — as sharp as ever, feeling musically adventurous, and still capable of reaching the staggering highs that have made them an international favorite. It’s the act of climbing those figurative “gravity stairs,” inspired by a heavy stone staircase near where Finn vacations, that he likens to his own mindset as a creator.
The Gravity Stairs are symbolic of the struggle to ascend, acknowledging the opposing forces of weight on the mechanics of living. It’s an act of will everyday.
Finn describes that process in “Magic Piano,” which opens the album. Lush and sophisticated, the song’s arrangement captures an almost hallucinatory feeling of drifting upward. “Let the melody reign, oh yeah,” Finn sings, offering homage to what he calls his “slavish devotion to music.”
Finn’s résumé bears that out. From joining his brother Tim in the Eighties artful pop band Split Enz to leading Crowded House to his numerous solo efforts, Finn’s varied body of work is connected by his knack for penning meticulous, indelible melodies and impressionistic lyrics that demand multiple listens. It’s earned him devoted fans all over the globe.
“Magic Piano” marked one of the first songs the band — whose members currently reside in four different countries — attempted to work up in rehearsals ahead of their recording sessions for Gravity Stairs, which took place in Australia, New Zealand, and California. The second day they played it, it suddenly clicked.
“It was a very different song when we started playing it. It was probably ambitious as a first recording because it’s not a simple song — it’s got a lot of twists and turns,” Finn says. “But the aim is to produce something that sounds effortless, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and that it’s always existed like that. That’s the art of record making.”
Other songs on Gravity Stairs do that in the best possible way. There’s a hyper-melodic, Brit-pop quality to “Teenage Summer “ which brims with sparkling vocal harmonies and a longing for connection. Finn imagined the song during the most isolated parts of the Covid lockdown, but instead of melancholy, it has a big, empathetic heart and hope to spare.
“It’s about trying to achieve some reality and being aware that connection is hard to make,” he says. “And even before Covid, it was hard to find closeness to people. That became particularly acute afterward.”
Themes of connection and love pop up in several places on Gravity Stairs. “All That I Can Ever Own” begins with a funky drum beat and shimmering keyboards as it examines impermanence through child rearing and property under threat by rising waters. By the time it reaches its conclusion, it’s arrived at something that sounds like jubilation. “There’s an awareness that you can’t really control the outcomes of what happens when you love someone,” Finn says. “Throughout your life there’s an element of letting go of anything other than the love you feel for somebody.”
Finn borrowed from his father’s war diary for “Some Greater Plan (for Claire),” drawing on a memory of a whirlwind romance in Italy for a melody that’s both seductive and emotional. “It was always a thing that came up. Dad would have this wistful look in his eye when he would talk about Italy,” Finn recalls. Finn’s brother Tim makes an appearance on the track, which is dedicated to a friend of Finn’s who’s no longer with us. Equally cinematic, the mysterious “Black Water, White Circle” peers through the world of dreams into the afterlife.
“Oh Hi,” a friendly tune with colorful spirals of guitar and a chorus worthy of repeat sing-alongs, makes a promise: “I won’t forget.” The tune has a deep connection to Finn’s philanthropic efforts with So They Can, an international nonprofit focused on building schools in remote parts of Kenya and Tanzania. “I’m hoping the song comes across without needing to know the backstory,” Finn says, “but it’s very much inspired by these incredible kids and their magnificence.”
Gravity Stairs is bookended by a second song about the joys and agonies of creating. “Night Song” is almost like a waking dream, slipping into different rhythmic patterns and arrangements as it unfolds and following the siren call of creation through a scorpion-guarded desert landscape and out through desolate stretches of night. “Wish there was another way,” Finn sings, knowingly.
“That was inspired by a guy I heard outside my hotel window at 3 in the morning. He was ranting and saying amazing things,” Finn says. “You share that part of the night with people who are on his kind of trip. I felt a strange kinship with him.” The unknown man’s voice is the last sound on Gravity Stairs and his wondrous exclamation is familiar in a way to Finn, who’s experienced his share of late nights trying to unlock the magic of a composition.
“People will certainly relate to the idea that no matter what you’re thinking about at 2 in the morning, it feels like obsession,” he says. “And when I’m working on songs, that’s the reality: I’m going to bed with a tune going round in my head, and I’ll wake up with a tune going round in my head.”
And as he has so many times before, Finn will make the decision to scale those gravity stairs yet again to see what awaits at the top.
Crowded House: Dreamers Are Waiting (2021)
THE RETURN OF A NEWLY CROWDED HOUSE
A True Tale of Old Friends and New Finns
By David Wild
The recurring musical dream known as Crowded House is far from over here in 2021. Today, Neil Finn --the group's lead singer and main songwriter since the very beginning --seems as pleasantly surprised as fans around the world about this turn of events. And as Finn makes clear, this beloved band is being revived and rebuilt not out of mere nostalgia or to please an algorithm, but rather on a sturdy foundation of newfound creative energy, familial harmony and a heartfelt exuberance for all of the new musical possibilities in front of them.
More than three decades after Crowded House's acclaimed debut effort made a lasting musical impression on our world, the current incarnation of the band now recording a new album and heading out on tour features some familiar faces in this enduring musical saga. Notably, Crowded House continues to feature Neil Finn himself and Crowded House's original member and founding bassist Nick Seymour. Finn and Seymour are now joined by their longtime friend and close collaborator Mitchell Froom --the producer and keyboardist featured on the group's first three albums --1986's Crowded House, 1988's Temple of Low Menand 1991's Woodface. All these years later, Froom has agreed to actually join Crowded House as its keyboardist, not only in the recording studio where he originally helped shape the then trio's distinctive sound but also playing live with them on tour.
At the same time, Crowded House has now formally welcomed into its ranks two gifted younger musicians who have quite literally grown up around this beloved band --Neil's sons. Joining the band is Liam Finn –who has already released his own series of acclaimed albums starting in 2007 --on guitar and vocals along with younger brother Elroy Finn --a multi-instrumentalist who released his debut album as simply Elroy in 2019 –on drums.
In other words, this House has never been more Crowded with assorted Finns and friends, and to hear Finn describe it now, it has rarely felt more focused. As Finn puts it, "I've always been afraid of just repeating the same formulas, and somehow this feels like a fresh and authentic way to re-approach Crowded House today with an awareness of all our history and where, how, and why it began in the first place. The original band mentality and philosophy in still in there, especially with Mitchell now part of it again, working in a different way along with Nick and I."
At the same time, Neil Finn clearly treasures all the new energy and talent brought to the party by Crowded House's latest additions: Liam --who was just two years old when Crowded House began --and his young brother Elroy. "There's a lot of footage of Liam as a little boy on the tour bus sitting on Nick's knee and the two of them drawing together," Neil Finn says with a smile. "And the same was true a little later with Elroy. So there's a deep sense of history and connection there that's remained even when the band was split. But Liam and Elroy are in the band because they have both become extraordinary musicians in their own right, and the proof is already showing in the music we're recording," Finn explains.
That musical chemistry was vividly on display when Crowded House went in to rehearse at Valentine Studio in Los Angeles before recording in United Studios and ended up tracking nearly half of the album without knowing it. For Finn, the early results of their recording have been thrilling, "What we are all doing together has some familiarity for Crowded House listeners, and also some new angles to explore," says Finn. "So it feels like this band can really develop and grow from here." Finn confesses that his restless creative spirit has contributed to him long having what he calls "a complicated relationship with Crowded House --one that's even inspired breakups, more or less."
Indeed, through the decades of triumph and tragedy, Crowded House has rarely seemed a fully closed concept. For a time, Finn's older brother and former Split Enz bandmate Tim Finn became a part of Crowded House to considerable success on the Woodfacealbum. Then, after the band split in 1996, Finn continued to work and collaborate outside of Crowded House --on solo albums like 1998's Try Whistling This, 2001's One Nil, 2017's Out of Silence which Neil co-produced with Liam, as well as even more collaborative efforts like 7 Worlds Collide, the acclaimed live album Finn recorded with a spontaneous supergroup including Eddie Vedder, Johnny Marr, and Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway. Other significant collaborations have included a 2013 live album with Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly, and 2018's Lightsleeper, a collaborative album with Liam, that also featured contributions by Neil's wife Sharon and Elroy. Speaking of close collaborators, Neil and Sharon even formed their own duo Pajama Club when they confronted an empty nest, aka their own temporarily less crowded house.
Yet with the death of Crowded House's charismatic drummer Paul Hester in 2005, it seemed perhaps the book had forever closed on any future for Crowded House. "Paul was a sensational performer who brought a huge amount of spirit to what we did," says Finn. "Like most good bands, you wanted to watch all the people on the stage. Yes, you could love the song and the lyric, but you were always struck by the little aside Paul would add --or the powerful feel Nick brought to it."
Yet, here again, Finn did the unexpected by making the difficult decision to record and perform again with Crowded House. "For me, there were plenty of reasons why it felt right when we got back together after we lost Paul,' Finn explains now. "Basically, I just did not want to leave us there with a big full stop because I think Paul, Nick, and I created something very positive in this world together and maybe there was more we could still do." And so it was that Finn and Seymour, with the help of drummer Matt Sherrod, recorded two new Crowded House albums, 2007's Time On Earth and 2010's Intriguer.
Remarkably, nearly another decade later, it was Neil Finn's surprise addition to the most recent lineup of rock legends Fleetwood Mac in 2018 that ultimately helped inspire Finn's desire to revive his own classic band in a new way. As Finn explains, "I still believe in the concept of bands. And finding myself inside a classic band like Fleetwood Mac full of great characters got me thinking about my band. I played "Don't Dream It's Over" in the Fleetwood Mac show and it went down really well. We tried "I Got You" from my time with Split Enz, and that did not work out quite as well. But the experience got me thinking. And in the end, I went right from the last Fleetwood Mac show straight into rehearsal with Crowded House the next day, just to test the waters. It was immediately obvious we were making a really good sound together. Even our rehearsal tapes had a tremendous vibe about them."
Finn views his Fleetwood Mac experience as a remarkable and educational. "It was quite a feeling to get rung up and asked by Mick," he recalls. "Sharon was walking past me at that moment, and I had this silly grin on my face because this was not an everyday experience for a guy like me --or for anyone really. But I wasn't sure it was the right thing to do because when there is such a legacy, there is a lot of baggage. But Sharon and the boys were like, 'You're not going to take the chance to stand in a room with Fleetwood Mac and sing with Stevie Nicks? What's the harm? Even if it doesn't go well, it's still a life experience worth having.' And it did go well."
Musically, too, being part of Fleetwood Mac's chain influenced Finn about the kind of music Crowded House might make. "So far, I would describe the album Crowded House is making as an outgoing record," he explains. "I've done a lot of introspective, melancholic music in my time. Playing sad songs is one of my favorite states, but partly influenced by singing with Fleetwood Mac and singing enthusiastic energetic songs at the top of my range, it's made me more interested in making music that is thrilling and creating that kind of energy."
As the recording process proceeds, Finn says that the harmonic possibilities of this new Crowded House "are already revealing itself. It was immediately apparent the harmonies would be wonderful. It's different than Tim and I --the whole brotherly thing --but there's an immediate understanding, nuance, and phrasing that you don't have to explain to each other. Liam and Elroy have amazing voices, both each in their own way. There's a tendency to ask, why didn't we do this years ago? And maybe we could have. But, it's probably best that young people have their own experiences and develop their own aesthetics first too. And Elroy has turned into this amazing drummer, and if we'd done this early, it might not have felt so right. I'm sure there will be buttons that will be pushed here and there --as families do that --but right now, the music is prevailing and the time feels right."
In the end, Neil Finn is a man enthusiastically rediscovering the benefits and joys of making music inside Crowded House. "As a solo artist, I've been guilty at times of over-embellishing," says Finn. "The great thing about being in a band is that you can really completely control the outcome because you are already giving over the song to other people to play in their own manner. Even if you tell them what you're thinking --and say do something like this--they are not going to do exactly what you say. And that begins to open up your song idea into something else. When you work on your own, you sometimes construct something beautiful that is harder for people to penetrate. With this group, other people have already penetrated the songs and found their way into the music. As I see it, that's the magic of a real group. The music becomes less of an artifice and has more cracks where the light can come through."
NEIL & LIAM FINN: LIGHTSLEEPER (2018)
As it’s a family affair, it’s entirely fitting that the story of Lightsleeper begins at a wedding.
It’s 2015, and Liam Finn is marrying his partner, Janina, on a Greek island. Liam’s father, Neil Finn, has done what one would expect one of the greatest songwriters of his generation to do, in the event of his songwriting son getting married: he has written a new song for the occasion. It is debuted at the point in the wedding when everyone has been invited to do some “free expression dancing.”
“Together/Together!” the chorus of Island of Peace goes. “Welcome to ships coming in/Safe harbour/Let love begin/Everybody hold on/ Together!”
In honour of the local Greek gods, Poseidon himself (Liam’s brother, Elroy Finn, gamely wearing a beard, and waving a trident) has risen from the sea, to give his “blessing.”
It’s a beautiful moment.
A short time later, however, the groom is fully unconscious. In the euphoria - and red wine - of the moment, a wedding guest lifts Liam onto his shoulders - only for said guest to misjudge the lift, and send the groom crashing to the ground.
“He was out cold for a moment - then lifted his hand to reveal a dislocated thumb,” Neil Finn recalls now, three years later. “That was the night over for him - but not everyone else. Minutes later, our marriage celebrant appeared, naked, out of the water, and strolled calmly through the taverna - coming to a halt in front of someone’s dallying husband that she ended up giving a big tonguey pash,” he adds, amused.
Beautifully, this story has all the elements of the Finn psycho-geographic landscape in a nutshell: family; song; love; red-wine joy; a cameo from the gods and their fickle influence over mankind’s fate; a painful intimation of human fragility and mortality; lust; kitchen- sink drama; and endless soaring skies. It’s little wonder that this was the moment in which Lightsleeper began.
For, once everyone’s hangovers had subsided, and Liam’s thumb became functional again, Lightsleeper started to come together: the first album written by father and son team Neil and Liam Finn.
Mainly recorded in Neil’s Auckland studio, Lightsleeper was intended to capture an atmosphere of “dreamy, cinematic beginnings”, and deal - in part - with the “profound generational shift” of both Liam’s marriage, and then the subsequent birth of his baby: Neil’s first grandchild.
That it bursts with both melody, and the trademark, woozy, switchback flips between the euphoria and sore longing that the Finn family are know for, goes without saying. It’s as sweet, drifting and burnt as wood-smoke. It’s the kind of album that you don’t so much play, as let ... coil through your house. Days later, you find yourself humming a fragment of it; running back to the record-player and pressing “play” again, to get that same oxytocin hit.
Neil and Liam work so well together - Liam layering “lo-fi sounds and atmospherics” over Neil’s lovesick Listen; Neil writing the first half of the liquidly rueful Hiding Place, then watching Liam finishing it, and taking it somewhere “totally unexpected” - that one wonders why they didn’t write together earlier. After all, musical collaboration is a well-established and wildly successful Finn family trope: Neil joined older brother Tim’s legendary new wave band Split Enz, and worked with him in the globally- conquering Crowded House, before recording the ravishing, stoned Finn Brothers album together.
Finn fate is for Finn to sing unto Finn, it seems. “I think it’s probably taken this long, because I’ve been doing my own thing,” Liam muses.
Leaving New Zealand at twenty, Liam relocated to Australia with his first band, Betchadupa. When they moved to London, and then split, he began a solo career, attracting worldwide acclaim with the I’ll Be Lightning album, and touring with Eddie Vedder, The Black Keys and Wilco. Two more albums followed: the tours gaining Liam a spiraling reputation for wild - and often unpredictable - live performances.
In 2015 - curious to see what happened - Liam and Neil finally came together onstage, with the set-list split 50/50.
“As I’m not entirely deluded - yet - I knew the people coming to those shows weren’t as familiar with my work as Dad’s; but the shows seemed to flow really well,” Liam says, modestly.
Anyone who saw Finn Sr and Jnr on tour - say, their Shepherd’s Bush Empire gig - will recall Liam as a shaggy-haired and effortlessly charismatic warrior in a red jacket, tearing up the stage with a Viking zeal, which his father, sitting at the piano, watched with joyous, elder-lion pride.
“After those live shows, we thought, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be nice to have songs to play that we’ve written together?’” Liam says, simply.
“It was risky,” Neil admits, “as we are both quite stubborn, and pedantic about different things. I was worried we might clash, and expose some weird deep family anxiety - but in fact we just upped the patience, tolerance and respect quotient, and avoided most of the angst. I loved seeing the way he works, and he was a good influence on me. The odd time, though there were haunted eyes, and inter-generational pain.”
“I love dad’s music,” Liam rejoins. “I’ve grown up with it being such a huge part of my life - I know it like the back of my hand. It’s been really great to have him learn my songs, and see his appreciation for what I do. I don’t think we have many others in our creative worlds that match up like this - so it’s been a great discovery.”
The sense of a shared world is what makes Lightsleeper so evocative - perhaps nowhere more so than on We Know What It Means: a song that inhabits the same world as John Lennon’s Beautiful Boy, and tells the story of bringing up the Finn family on the road: “Growing up and knowing what the dangers are/Doesn’t mean you lose your spark/You’ll always be a child at heart,” before vertically taking off into a joyous chorus, which begins, “We never laughed so hard/Rolling on the kitchen floor.”
“That evokes Liam’s childhood spent moving around on buses, and how we’ve now both arrived at place where we have fully lived a life, and can relate to each other as adults,” Neil nods.
“It feels poignant - after just completing our first tour with our son Buddy on the road,” Liam agrees.
The simple ethos of making music with friends and family continues right through the personnel recruited for the album: the touring band - Sharon Finn - Neil’s wife, and Liam’s mother - plays bass on two of the songs, Elroy Finn - Liam’s brother - drums on seven; and good friend Connan Mockasin returns for four. Greek drinking buddies of Neil’s bring plaintive bouzoukis to Back To Life, and Fleetwood Mac legend Mick Fleetwood turns up to party on Anger Plays a Part, Any Other Way, and We Know What It Means.
“I had caught up with Mick Fleetwood a month or so earlier, and sent out a wishful invitation to him to take part in the recording session,” Neil explains. “It was a lovely surprise that he said yes. It turns out he loves to play, and hang, and tell brilliant stories. He was also, by far, the best dressed in the studio.”
This unmistakable spirit - of musicians at their peak, bound together by the still-hot desire to make music that isn’t simply that year’s work, but something brewed up with bones, love, quiet revelation and the perfectly-evoked euphoria of being alive - is what makes Lightsleeper such a gorgeous progression in the Finn family musical history. It’s the Finns you turn to, time and time again, when you need a song that effects that Blakeian miracle - of showing you the world in just one grain of sand.
And indeed, this ethos continues in the Finn/Finn side-project: a forthcoming film, shot on tour in New Zealand as they abandoned the urban hubs, and headed up into the hills, down into the valleys, and over to the beach, playing tiny community halls - curiously and lovingly looking their country in the eye.
“When you grow up at the bottom of the world, your aspirations focused on the the glittering lights of New York and Europe; the mystery and allure of the East,” Neil explains. “Young New Zealanders head out as soon as they can - but are they missing something precious on their own doorstep? Now the world seems fixated on watching itself in a spiral of despair, perhaps there is something to be discovered by exploring the margins; whats happening unobserved in the small towns. Some truth.”
Some truth on your home-town; where it had always been waiting for you.
“I think we’ve learned that we just want to create good memories,” Liam says. “We’re always going to make the most of it, and enjoy the hell out of it. At the end of the day bands break up ... but we’ll always be a family.”
And is there a Finn family motto, musically-speaking? “I guess it’s, ‘Does it make you feel something?’” Neil replies. There is no better intent. That’s all there is.
NEIL FINN: OUT OF SILENCE (2017)
“For a long time, I’ve wanted to do a record in one crack and get it out in a week… Then I thought, ‘Well if we’re going to do that, let’s not make it a little acoustic thing that’s easy to record in one session. Let’s make it the most sophisticated record I’ve ever made.”
Throughout August, Neil Finn gave his fans the opportunity to follow the progress of his new album OUT OF SILENCE, with four weekly live streams culminating in the incredible four hour session last Friday that concluded the process.
It was an ambitious undertaking. Not least because the songs that comprise OUT OF SILENCE demand ambitious settings. However, as the sessions progressed, it slowly became apparent that the audience was privy to the creation of something truly exceptional.
Completed on the very first day of the sessions, the album’s initial single More Than One Of You seemed to establish the emotional temperature for what followed, given wings to fly by an illustrious choir featuring well-loved New Zealand recording artists Tiny Ruins, Lawrence Arabia and Don McGlashan. Unveiled on the second of the four live streams, Alone saw Neil’s brother Tim step forward to share the vocal duties after the pair warmed up with renditions of a couple of old Finn Brothers songs.
Anyone who has been watching the album sessions unfold will know just how crucial Victoria Kelly, already feted for her work with director Peter Jackson on The Hobbit and The Lovely Bones, has been to the process. Prior to OUT OF SILENCE, Neil and Victoria had worked together on the acclaimed Dizzy Heights album and a string of ensuing live shows. Both relished the challenge of recording OUT OF SILENCE in this way. As Neil puts it, “The thing about it is that if you’ve only got, at best, two or three chances to get it right, you don’t dick around in the studio. You prepare as best as you can. You make sure the songs are bolted together right.”
On Chameleon Days, an unadorned piano phrase is undercut by ominous strings. Independence Day is a gem in the tradition of Love This Life (from Temple of Low Men), Faster Than Light (from Try Whistling This) and, of course, Don’t Dream It’s Over (Crowded House). Terrorise Me is rooted in the tragic events that befell the Bataclan in November 2015, a memorial to every person who lost their life that night. “In my distant home,” sings Neil, “I will write a melody/That I will sing for you when I return/It may not change a lot/But I'll give it everything I've got/It will come to life because of you.”
Then there’s the insidiously catchy Second Nature (“inspired by a couple I saw on a Vespa in Athens, looking like mythological Gods”) and Love Is Emotional, a nod to our powerlessness in the face of what love has in store for us. Listen also to the careworn confidences imparted on I Know Different, somehow deeply personal yet utterly universal. It isn’t easy to make it look this easy.
The same, of course, could be said for the manner in which the recording sessions proceeded. It is hard to believe that the majority of OUT OF SILENCE was recorded in a single four hour burst. But perhaps the greatest mark of its success is that, were you not watching it happen in real time, you would never be able to guess. A mere week later, OUT OF SILENCE is available to download and stream, with CD to follow two weeks later. For Neil, it’s the culmination of a life-long ambition. “Sometimes making music and making records don’t always feel like the same thing. But I always felt there had to be a way to merge them. And for me, this was the way to do it. I finally worked it out!”