Get all the info on Crowded House's new single and what's in store for 2021.
Crowded House frontman Neil Finn is in Piha, west of Auckland, relishing his return to New Zealand after a very long stint overseas.
"We only just got back four weeks ago," he tells Double J's Zan Rowe. "We were in quarantine for two weeks in a hotel in downtown Auckland.
"Now we're just luxuriating. We're loving being back and seeing family. It's been busy."
Loading...Hear Zan Rowe's chat with Neil Finn above
Much of the past few years has seen Finn on the road as Lindsey Buckingham's replacement in classic rock behemoth Fleetwood Mac. But, when that touring was done, Finn was forced into isolation in Los Angeles.
"We were so quiet in LA," he says.
"We had this little life going on, which actually wasn't at all bad. We had the family down the road and in our bubble, and we were in a nice place with hills to walk in and good delivery services in LA. So, really, we can't complain.
"But we've come back and suddenly we're seeing we're seeing all our family and friends. Dinners and restaurants. It's actually quite a sensory bombardment."
Crowded House are back
Lockdown in LA proved a fruitful experience for Neil Finn.
A couple of years out the front of Fleetwood Mac reminded the ever exploratory, always busy songwriter of the power of big, beloved classic rock bands.
"I wanted to make an album and was very attached to the idea of being in a classic band," he says.
"Then I thought, 'Well, I've got a band… let's redesign it, redefine it, revitalise it and go and record an album straight off the back of that experience'.
"So, it was an inspiration for me to get cracking and put this this beast back together."
Loading...The first step: figuring out who was in the band.
Paul Hester's passing in 2005 means the classic line-up of Crowded House can never reform. But Finn fans will be very pleased with Crowdies' latest incarnation.
"Well, of course Nick Seymour, my old friend and collaborator, is at the heart of it and has created some beautiful new artwork which people will get to see pretty soon," Finn begins.
"We have added my sons Liam and Elroy, who I've been playing with a lot for the last few years. They bring with them amazing, now-experienced songwriting and ranges and are just playing out of their skins.
"We also have Mitchell Froom, who was the original band's producer and has always played keyboards on our records."
While playing with an old friend and his family is undoubtedly a huge joy, enlisting Froom is also quite a coup for Finn. He has wanted him in the band for some time.
"We did ask him to join back in the day, but he was too fixated on being a producer," Finn says.
"We had to train him not to be a producer in this context and actually just play his beautiful keyboards.
"Because he has a deft touch, not only as a B3 player – as people will know from the organ solo in 'Don't Dream It's Over' – but beautiful, shimmery textures and colours that he's added to old songs of ours and also this new album.
"It's a really great line-up. We already have done enough playing to know that it's transformative."
Working in lockdown
You can expect Dreamers Are Waiting, a new Crowded House album, early next year.
It's not strictly a lockdown project – the band had commenced recording before COVID hit – but the mood of the current day certainly contributed to the way the album has come out.
"I wanted the album to be outgoing," Neil Finn says.
"Even more so when the lockdown happened, I didn't really want to make melancholy, sad little songs. Everyone was feeling that anyway. So, we gravitated naturally towards the ideas that enabled us to be outgoing."
Finn is thankful to have already started the record before the world shut down. He's just not sure if the events of 2020 would have proved inspiring or constricting.
"I have talked to other writers who say, 'Yeah, it's been really great. I've been just doing lots of work' and other people have said, 'I haven't been able to do a thing. It's just too weird and I don't know what to write about'," he says.
"I'm not sure what would have happened to me if I'd been beginning something.
"As it was, I sort of turned a few things upside down halfway through the process and went 'you know, this doesn't sound right anymore'. I kind of just chucked it up in the air and saw how the bits came down and reinvented a few.
"That may have had something to do with the lockdown, or maybe not. It's in my nature to destroy and reassemble."
Most of the band were close by but they tinkered away alone anyway.
"We were in LA together – Liam, Elroy and myself – and Mitchell is in Santa Monica, but we were still working in our individual little pods: sending files and doing Zoom calls," Finn says.
"Nick is on the west coast of Ireland, as far away from us as anyone could be really. He's got a lovely little place in Easkey. He likes to surf the cold surf of the West Coast over there.
"He was sending his files over and he's done all his contributions to videos, and he's now sent the artwork.
"We function quite well remotely. It's good to know you can. It's a blessing of this otherwise very difficult year. I say that knowing that, for a lot of other people, it's been a bloody horrible year.
"We feel pretty blessed to have something to work on. Music to work on, family around us, and to have stayed healthy so far."
If you're a Crowded House fan already filled with hatred at what 2020 has done to your plans… well, maybe don't read this next bit.
"We were planning to be touring," Finn says nonchalantly.
"We were supposed to be in the English and European festival season doing a bunch of stuff. And probably around about now touring Australia and New Zealand, with the new album just about out. So, the whole thing got changed."
It's not all bad though. More time allowed Finn and his Crowded House colleagues to perform careful surgery on their new songs.
"It did enable us time to ponder and work on the record," he says.
"Having done the rhythm tracks in studio in LA, we sort of disembarked into our little pods.
"It was actually, in a way, quite a great combination of old fashioned recording in the studio, and then a new kind of getting out the scalpel and adding bits and pieces and having the time to get the nuances really well conceived."
The first single
Today we hear the first new Crowded House music in a decade, a bouncy, slightly woozy slice of art-pop called 'Whatever You Want'.
The song's chorus was kicking around for a while, but it wasn't until it got the seal of approval from a very important sounding board – Liam Finn's four-year-old son Buddy – that Neil committed to finishing it.
"Well, I had the phrase, 'People will tell you whatever you want', and a little hook that went with it," Finn begins.
"Our grandson Buddy picked up on it at some early stage and started singing around the house, so we thought, 'Well, there's something about it that's hooky'."
Lyrically, the song has a particular pertinence for the time.
"I guess in the year we're in, and in the age of misinformation and untruth and propaganda and stuff, the idea that there's a lot of people saying whatever they think that people want to hear – or, alternatively, what their boss wants to hear – is an interesting thought," Finn says.
"It could sometimes just be the voices in your own head doing mischief and reassuring you about your own fears and anxieties. But the 'yes men' and the enablers, it's kind of directed to them."
Fears and anxieties proved the bedrock of the music video as well.
Just about anyone who's ever had a big night can relate to "the fear".
With your lips loosened and inhibitions dulled by one too many glasses of wine, you go on a verbal rampage. The next morning, you really wish you hadn't.
This is the feeling the band wanted to explore in the clip for 'Whatever You Want'.
"We wanted to explore the concept of waking up with the fear after a big night," Finn says.
"A lot of people can relate to that: 'What did I say? What do I do? Oh, God. Hang on a minute, I think I've offended…'"
The clip features indie-rock megastar Mac DeMarco playing the role of a man who's had a big night and looks for reassurance about his behaviour from inanimate objects: porcelain figurines, bottles of cleaning product, photos on the mantlepiece… that kinda thing.
"The idea was that he was going to draw some reassurance from the objects he collected around himself in his home. His path to redemption through the day: that was the idea.
"The director Nina [Ljeti] thought about a few different people to act the role. She suggested Mac; we've known Mac for a few years now and Liam and Elroy were particularly good mates.
"She knew him as well and had a hunch that he had some kind of acting charisma and that he might be a good bet.
"He just said yes straight away. It was one of those lovely phone calls. She was going 'Well, did you want to think about doing this thing?' He said 'No, it sounds great. Let's do it.'"
The song fits with Finn's idea that this must be outgoing music for these often too insular times.
"This is definitely an upbeat song, with a great drum track from Elroy," he says. "There's quite a few songs on the record that are similarly upbeat, but there's a variety of things.
"There's plenty of tunes and a bit of medium tempo. But no real slow ballads, which maybe some people might miss. A few people out there probably love the weepies."
Getting the band back together
When Neil Finn joined Double J as our Artist In Residence, he really showed the extent of his music fandom.
Being such a huge music fan puts Finn in a better position to get inside the minds of the people who relish his work.
He knows that, much as you love the chorus to 'Better Be Home Soon', the lead guitar line in the pre-chorus to 'Fingers Of Love' may move you just as much.
A home-school approach to getting Crowded House ready for live shows – the first of which will take place in New Zealand early in 2021 – has allowed the new members of the band a chance to replicate the songs in special new ways.
"It enabled the boys and Mitchell to really dig deep into the nuances of the records," Finn says.
"We've been listening on headphones, and they've discovered little details and arrangements that I'd forgotten about and we gloss over sometimes."
Finn knows what it's like to be in their shoes. His love of Fleetwood Mac had him adopting a similar approach when he joined that band.
"I was really intent on finding some of those lovely little details that have an emotional response for people, even if they don't really notice them," he says.
"For instance, on [1975 Fleetwood Mac hit] 'Landslide' there's a beautiful, lyrical piece of guitar playing in the middle that Lindsay always did on the acoustic guitar, as he was strumming as well.
"On this tour, we had Neil Hayward who is the additional guitarist, doing that really beautiful piece of musical filigree in great detail. You could actually hear the audience gasp, because they hadn't heard it for many years exactly as the record.
"So yeah, those details will really help, I think."
As for a new Fleetwood Mac album? Well, let's just say Neil Finn wants one just as much an anyone.
"Hey, I would like nothing more than to think there was a new Fleetwood Mac album on the way as well," he says. "But that's moving a mountain. There's great will there, but it's a big operation."
'Whatever You Want' is out now.
Hear Zan Rowe on Double J Mornings, weekdays from 9am on Double J.