Crowded House – Intriguer (2010)

by Nick DeRiso

Crowded House, beginning with their engaging breakthrough 1987 hit “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” were shot through with a complexity, and a melancholy, that belied their own supposed goals of becoming pop stars.

Yet, in the wake of the 2005 suicide of drummer and co-founder Paul Hester, never have they had so much to be melancholy and complex about. That leads to a purpled, impressionistic sentiment on “Intriguer,” only Crowded House’s second release since Hester’s passing.

Perhaps understandably, singer and principal songwriter Neil Finn’s lyrics, like his voice, have taken a more intricate, oaken turn. There are no easy answers or, necessarily, even easy melodies.

Yet the record turns slowly, like a flower to the sun.

Veteran producer and engineer Jim Scott (Wilco) also helps push the band into new and (yes) intriguing sonic spaces.

That’s best heard on “Isolation,” which has this diaphanous expanse, like the best late-1960s psychedelia in that it recognizes the separation that goes with any relationship but doesn’t descend into 1980s-hip nihlism. Finn, firmly pleading “open your heart,” hasn’t given up on love. Then the tune, building on the innocent reverb so firmly associated with the Beach Boys, boldly soars away with an appropriately enigmatic guitar solo — highlighting the line “I wait for you to make a sign.”

Nick Seymour’s just-right fuzzy bass line opens the record on “Saturday Sun,” which perhaps sounds the most like the decade of this band’s heyday (and also something like Sonic Youth‘s grinding, brilliant “The Eternal”) — but, really, nothing like old Crowded House.

“Archer’s Arrows” and “Twice If You’re Lucky” update the band’s well-worn Fab obsessions with sharp-turned modern twists in song structure, boldly opaque instrumentation, and knowing choruses that sound like autumnal sunshine. The core band is augmented multi-instrumentalist Mark Hart (a one-time member of Supertramp; he came on board around the time of the Crowdies’ “Together Alone”), Finn’s wife Sharon (who adds a series of bright vocal turns) and son Liam’s grinding guitar flourishes.

Perhaps expectedly, there are moments where “Intriguer” seems to gear down into rote poignancy, perhaps under the still lingering weight of such a profound loss. The ballad “Amsterdam,” for instance, falls flat.

But then you have a country-ish gem like “Inside Out,” where Finn makes an unguarded invitation to join in the band’s ongoing convalescence: “Move me into silence,” Finn implores. (It recalls “She Called Up,” which speaks to an absence too, perhaps of Hester — replaced here by Beck’s former drummer, Matt Sherrod.)

“Either Side of the World,” which is joined on the record with “Falling Dove,” marries a galloping, almost rockabilly beat with Crowded House’s signature contemplative romanticism. “Everybody knows it,” Finn sings, “when you’re in luck … and then, you’re in hell.”

Yet “Intriguer,” dark and tender, never stops searching for the light. “Twice If You’re Lucky” (perhaps the closest this album comes to Crowded House redux) makes a convincing argument for connecting, even when “you think reality’s shut you down.”

On the closing “Elephants,” a lingering Finn takes a long look around at what remains. “Let’s admit the world doesn’t turn around us — acting like we don’t exist,” he sings, to a simple piano refrain.

Finn then seems to shake awake to what his goals should have been all along: “Sweet dreams, make waves, find bliss.”

Absorbing, and ever more mature, Crowded House just keeps doing all of that.