{"id":3087,"date":"2011-08-03T15:51:23","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T22:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3087"},"modified":"2011-08-05T16:27:59","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T23:27:59","slug":"crowded-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/crowded-house\/","title":{"rendered":"CROWDED HOUSE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

CROWDED HOUSE<\/h1>\n

Neil Finn and company return with some very intriguing new music<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Upon its reunion in 2006 after a decade of inaction, Crowded House and its fans alike took some time getting used to a reality without original drummer Paul Hester, who passed away the previous year. But the new Intriguer<\/em> album, recorded in the group\u2019s native New Zealand and producer Jim Scott\u2019s home base of Los Angeles, is very much the work of an act whose now-stable lineup has proven its mettle on the road and is eager to keep building upon its estimable legacy. We caught up with Crowded House founder and frontman Neil Finn as he and his bandmates prepared to hit the stage in Barcelona, Spain.<\/p>\n

Do you still get nervous before a show?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s always a degree of apprehension, but I\u2019m not nervous. I\u2019m not one of those people who throws up before a show. (laughs<\/em>)<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

You worked out some of the new songs on tour. Had you always done that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We did it more on this record than we have before. I\u2019m not sure whether the process was necessary, but it served us well. A couple of the songs got completely transformed. There were a few hardcore fans out there who got bootlegs of those shows and couldn\u2019t\u00a0believe what they were hearing when they finally got to hear the finished record.\u00a0It doesn\u2019t sound anything like what they\u00a0were expecting, so they had a little\u00a0catching up to do.<\/p>\n

What is your writing process like now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s really the same as it always has been. I noodle around on guitar and make sure I\u2019ve got a tape recorder going. I hum a few tunes and get a few lines popping out. I\u2019ll have a moment of, \u201cOh, something good happened there.\u201d I\u2019ll check it back and take my lead from that\u2014even if it was just 10 seconds where I was hitting something. I\u2019ll learn that and advance on it, then I\u2019ll tape it again. Eventually I\u2019ll make a demo and stick some harmonies on it. That\u2019s quite loose around the edges, and the band sometimes makes it sound completely different.<\/p>\n

Is there a guitar you prefer to write on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not in particular, it could be any guitar. I do have a lovely old Gibson acoustic that I do try to use a lot. I actually write on piano just as often as guitar.<\/p>\n

Why did you pick the album title?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Intriguer is a mythological character discovered by myself and an Australian friend of mine, a cartoonist named Michael Leunig. Late one night in a bar in Sydney, we saw a shadow moving across a window on the top floor of a hotel. Every time we saw the shadow move, something happened in the bar\u2014like a woman had a screaming match with her husband, things like that.<\/p>\n

We realized he was shadowing us and creating intrigue and trouble, so it\u2019s a little nod in his direction. Even though we\u2019ve never seen him and he always goes away, he makes life interesting.<\/p>\n

Have you had any sightings lately?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s always sightings here. In Barcelona there\u2019s always a mystery around every corner\u2014you\u2019ll take a wrong turn and end up in a blind alley. It\u2019s always something.<\/p>\n

How does it feel to be in Crowded House now? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great thing to have Crowded House active again, and I think we\u2019re playing\u00a0better than we ever have as a live band.\u00a0We like the fact that we now have moved on and made a couple of new records.\u00a0We aren\u2019t just a band available for nostalgia events, we\u2019re actually a band that\u2019s moving ahead. It\u2019s something we can\u00a0feel good about.<\/p>\n

\u2013Chris Neal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CROWDED HOUSE Neil Finn and company return with some very intriguing new music Upon its reunion in 2006 after a decade of inaction, Crowded House and its fans alike took some time getting used to a reality without original drummer Paul Hester, who passed away the previous year. But the new Intriguer album, recorded in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[2293,623,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3087"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3104,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions\/3104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}