Dreamers Are Waiting

Album released 4 June 2021 (EMI/Universal)

1. Bad Times Good lyrics
2. Playing With Fire lyrics
3. To The Island lyrics
4. Sweet Tooth lyrics
5. Whatever You Want lyrics
6. Show Me The Way lyrics
7. Goodnight Everyone lyrics
8. Too Good For This World lyrics
9. Start Of Something lyrics
10. Real Life Woman lyrics
11. Love Isn’t Hard At All lyrics
12. Deeper Down lyrics

Neil Finn: Vocals, guitars, piano and keyboards
Nick Seymour: Bass, vocals, keys
Liam Finn: Guitar, vocals and keys
Elroy Finn: Drums, guitars, vocals and keys
Mitchell Froom: Keyboards

Produced by Crowded House.
Recorded by David Boucher and Crowded House at Valentine Recording Studios and United Recording Studios, Los Angeles. Additional recording at home in lockdown from Ireland to LA. 2nd Engineers: Travis Pavur and Wesley Seidman.
Mixed by David Boucher at Chateau Boucher.
Artwork by Nick Seymour.
Further credits are in the LP and CD booklets.

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."