100 Best Albums of the Eighties

71. Crowded House, ‘Crowded House’

It sounds like it was fun to make. Crowded House’s debut album is full of lighthearted, melodic, enormously catchy pop songs: “Mean to Me,” “World Where You Live,” “Now We’re Getting Somewhere,” “Something So Strong” and its biggest hit, “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” From start to finish, Crowded House is shot through with the high spirits and sheer tunefulness of classic pop music.

But it turns out that the album wasn’t so easy to make after all. “It’s remarkable to me that it sounds like a really simple, easygoing album,” says Crowded House leader Neil Finn, “because there was quite a large amount of angst involved in making that record.”

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Finn, drummer Paul Hester and bassist Nick Seymour formed the band after the dissolution of the underappreciated New Zealand pop group Split Enz, of which Finn and Hester were members. They’d been together for about a year when they traveled to Los Angeles to make their debut album for Capitol Records in 1986 ”” but still, says Finn, “we weren’t really a band at all. Having come from a band that had spent ten years together, it just felt like a collection of three people at that stage.”

They shared a house in the Hollywood Hills ”” hence the band’s name ”” and went to work with producer Mitchell Froom, at the time best known for his work with the Boston roots rockers the Del Fuegos.

“They hadn’t really decided what they wanted the record to sound like,” says Froom. “Even the broadest terms ”” like, should there be a lot of synthesizers, or should it be more of a natural thing? ”” weren’t sorted out. We just tried different things as we went along, and it seemed to take on a character of its own as it went along.”

“It was bloody hard work,” says Finn, “partly because it was all so new to me ”” new producer, new band, new record company, new town, new everything ”” that I was really cautious every step of the way. I was wary of what Mitchell was suggesting and second-guessing him, and he wasn’t completely confident with us, either.”

A handful of session musicians, including guitarists. Tim Pierce and Joe Satriani (the latter on backing vocals only), were brought in, and on “Now We’re Getting Somewhere” the experienced rhythm section of bassist Jerry Scheff and drummer Jim Keltner was used.

“At the time that was quite a threatening thing,” says Finn. “Paul and Nick felt quite sheepish about the whole thing. The next day we recorded ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over,’ and it had a particularly sad groove to it ”” I think because Paul and Nick had faced their own mortality.”

The results hardly sounded forced, though the album seemed to be a flop until persistent word of mouth and some never-say-die promotion turned it into a hit eight months after its release. “It could easily have not been successful,” says Finn. Indeed, the group’s follow-up album, Temple of Low Men, failed to garner significant sales despite strong reviews. “The difference between an album becoming successful and people thinking it’s remarkable,” says Finn, “and being obscure and completely forgotten about is really slight.”