Crowded House home soon

Photo: Reuters

Lead singer Neil Finn performs with Crowded House in California in 2007.

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"EXOTIC in parts, traditional in origin. Has some drama and intrigue ..."

Is Neil Finn reading from the back of a bottle? It's 11am. The singer puts down his Crowded House bio notes.

"The one thing you won't find me very much doing in here is actually talking about what the record sounds like. That's always hard for an artist."

Friday morning, Roundhead Studios, Auckland. Finn wears jandals, drinks something murky from a giant cup and reflects on "the continuation of the reformation".

A new album. A new tour. And a one-off New Zealand gig at the Auckland Town Hall on April 8.

It's three years since the last Crowded House album. "We had the desire to go out and make a new record. It was partly about rediscovering that we were making really good noise together."

The Auckland concert will come before the album release. When the Sunday Star-Times visited, a title was imminent. Hot contenders? Goodnight Honey or The Intriguer. Either way, the latter will be getting airplay. "The Intriguer" is a song about a character invented by Finn and Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig.

"It's a shadowy character you see at pivotal times ..." Its role, says Finn, "is to provide interest and intrigue and surprise and accident in your life".

It was 2am in a bar in Sydney. Leunig and Finn saw a mysterious figure silhouetted across a top-storey curtained window. Someone dropped a tray of drinks. Blame The Intriguer.

"There are moments when life becomes dull and featureless," says Finn. "And then we wish for The Intriguer."

Sometimes, says Finn, things just line up. Fate? "I would never prescribe fate to any particular situation. But we don't know the half of it, do we? We don't know a quarter of it. A tenth of it... we're like somnambulists. We're just walking in our sleep."

Crowded House, he says, provides the possibility of transformation. Expect some psychedelia – and some straightforward pop songs. This is the band, after all, that the bass player wanted to make the biggest in the world.

Crowded House. It could have been a contender. It's the Australian-Kiwi hybrid that broke through to the American charts. It won awards, garnered fans.

But, says Finn, in those bio notes, "I dyed my hair one too many times and worried about it all far too much. Paul built up a layer of contempt for the whole circus".

Drummer Paul Hester committed suicide in 2005.

"In the aftermath of losing Paul Hester, it made me think about what bands are," says Finn. "And the good things about being in a band and a desire to put some history on the board after that and not just leave it as this big black fullstop at the end of the story."

He thinks about his friend "all the time".

"And in the audiences I'm sure people are missing him and are reminded of him. But that's just the nature of getting on with your life. You have to take it with you to some degree."

The band – Finn, Nick Seymour, Mark Hart and new drummer Matt Sherrod – is now scattered across the world. Australia, Ireland, the United States and New Zealand are among the places they call home. "Our reason for getting back together and becoming a contemporary band was not nostalgia. It was trying to seize the spirit of what we had and push it forward a little more."

Crowded House, Auckland Town Hall, Thursday, April 8. Tickets on sale February 11.

- © Fairfax NZ News