New sounds in the house

Liam and Neil Finn on stage together during last year's 7 Worlds Collide shows; Finn on stage in Auckland during Crowded House's last world tour in 2008. Photo / Supplied by Universal

Neil Finn's moustache isn't quite as good yet as his other one across the road. There, opposite his Roundhead Studios in Newton, is a Crowded House tour poster.

On it, the frontman has had the Marcel Duchamp - who famously drew a mo' and goatee on the Mona Lisa - treatment.

First came a Dali moustache, which Finn thought was a definite improvement, so he started growing one himself.

Then someone added a pointy beard to the poster. That led to a radio competition which offered tickets to the most creative additions to the posters around town advertising the upcoming Crowded House show at the Auckland Town Hall, the opening of the campaign for new album Intriguer.

"That is why all around town I have been defaced," he chuckles. "I've had a couple of people come up to me, going 'why do they do that to you?"'

Laughing alongside him is the band's American drummer Matt Sherrod, whose recruitment marked the start of Crowded House version 2.0 with the 2007 album Time on Earth and subsequent world tour.

The pair sit on a couch in one of Roundhouse's many rooms cluttered with instruments and cables.

"There is nothing better than a roo that is ready to play music in." says Finn about his musical headquarters, which has become the studio of choice for much of the local music industry and where both the new and the previous Crowded House albums were recorded.

Elsewhere in the building are the Finn's fellow Crowded House founding member Nick Seymour and the band's American utility player Mark Hart.

Relative new boy Sherrod may look the odd-man-out in the line-up but Finn says Sherrod recalled his predecessor from the first time they played together.

"I remember that in a funny kind of way that when we auditioned Matt, there was a slight echo of when we auditioned Paul Hester for Split Enz, back in the day," he says of the drummer with whom he formed Crowded House after the end of the Enz, and who died in 2005.

"Paul came in and he did exactly the same thing. He was still getting oriented but he put this really incredibly solid groove together. I took that as a good omen when Matt sat down."

"There was a lot to commend Matt but it actually as attractive to us that he didn't know too much about Crowded House, because it seemed like whatever burden there might be in following Paul was totally removed."

Sherrod: "The first year and a half of me being in the band was just me learning how to follow Neil. All the bands I played with I have pretty much driven the bus. So to accompany someone was a whole different kind of thing. So that was a subtlety. I had to listen ..."

Predictably Finn does most of the talking but Sherrod, who came to prominence as the sticksman for Beck, proves jovial company, especially when he talking about how he's coping being part of an Australasian music institution and its particular quirks. Especially those of his rhythm section partner and the band's resident visual artist.

"It was a mystery to me when I first joined the band, Nick's bass playing. It's like he's painting. But with the bass!"

As well as offering his impressionist approach to the bottom end, Seymour also officiated at Sherrod's wedding to a "nice New Zealand girl". Seymour got ordained as a minister via an American website which apparently does that sort of thing. Finn couldn't attend the stateside nuptials but played piano for it, via Skype.

"In Crowded House there are no one-night-stands," says Finn, putting on his best stern-father voice. "Are you going to marry the girl? Are you serious about this?"

The new album is really the first new Crowded House album since he originally decided to call it quits on the band in 1995. Time on Earth had started off as another Neil Finn solo project before turning into a band set.

Though Intriguer doesn't sound like your old Crowded House. While Time on Earth had elements that you could peg back to past recordings, this one takes a widescreen expansive approach.

"It is quite richly textured," says Finn. "Some of it is just what happens. You just follow your nose and things get added and you get enchanted by them and you leave them on. I suppose there is an attempt to try and psychedelic-ise a few things as well, giving people something new to notice after three or four listens."

Some things they might notice lyrically are a sense of travel, with some songs inspired by Crowded House's last European excursion which took them to places they had never played before. That included Poland, Austria and Russia where they played in Moscow and a tiny club in St Petersburg which Sherrod says was his most memorable show of the tour. "The stage was about the size of this couch."

While Amsterdam is, well, about the Dutch capital and a certain day which left quite an impression on Finn.

"A Saturday night in Amsterdam, is just one of the strangest places on Earth. To me, it feels like the morning after the big party. It's got that spirit of freedom from the 60s and it took root there not it feels slightly manipulated by big money and a serious drug culture. And when you go into a cafe with Bob Marley playing it doesn't feel quite as chilled out as it should be. I just got this feeling that Amsterdam is at the end of a reasonably long trip."

There's a lot of kilometres in the songs but it's an album of just 10 tracks.

Finn: "I was fixated on a shorter record this time because I feel like I've been caught in that trap on previous records, where you get really attached to them because you spend so much time on them and that becomes the overriding thing - how to fit them in rather than what creates the best listening experience. And I like a 10-song record."

As usual, he had some help from the family. Son Liam adds his six-string playing to an album which has a bigger guitar sound than any past Crowded House record.

"We've had our moments on all our records, though the mix on our 80s records and 90s records were more pop in a way and I think [producer] Jim Scott has more of a push-up-the-faders kind of approach. So the guitars when they are heavy they are heavy."

And wife Sharon Finn adds her voice to two tracks. Paid by the hour was she?

"As she has always been ... .since day dot," jokes Finn.

He says the new songs are no less or more personal than his solo efforts. And he's always preferred being part of a group.

"I enjoy the company of my bandmates. It's a much more fulsome experience to be on stage with people who have a share or a stake in it, than it is with people who are just being paid a wage."

But he does concede a few reflective touches in the lyrics.

"There are lyrics that I hope in a positive way, examining getting older, feeling the younger men pushing at my heels or pushing me along a little bit. What with my son out there and stuff.

"There are a couple of specific songs along those lines. The idea of regeneration and finding the thread again."

Is he competitive with Liam, who has now established himself internationally under his own name, as he might have once been once with older brother Tim?

"In a really good way I think we are, yeah. But it's healthy.

"You know it's complex. With Tim, too, for many years I didn't feel any real competition other than if he wrote a good song I wanted to write one too. When we work together we have moments where we're dancing around each other's egos, which creates tension that is unspoken and that is a problem sometimes.

"It's funny, when we are not working together we communicate really well and get on really well and we don't have any issues.

"I am constantly inspired by what Liam does. I think he's an incredibly adventurous, amazing performer and his flow of [musical] friends through this building has expanded my horizons."

Finn says he is looking forward to encountering the band's loyal international following again on the forthcoming tour. Much of the fanbase are now well into middle age, "but we had quite a lot of young people who had grown up with the records in the house and they were coming to see us for the first time. It's a very reassuring thing to find the songs themselves have a life."

Then there's the truly ardent fans like one Auckland woman ... .

"She writes letters to me as if I know who she is and as if we have a long and very friendly relationship, possibly even more in her mind, I don't know.

"She said 'I've been listening to [new song] Elephants and I love it even though it makes me feel very sad to think of you are feeling so lost and discontent.'

"I realise there is always going to be that dilemma of people listening to songs and thinking they know what is happening in my life."

Or Dave Mustaine, the frontman for veteran American speed-metallers Megadeth who is one of the band's biggest fans and never misses a show when they play in Los Angeles. Finn says the rocker recently insisted they should co-write.

He rang us and said 'It's Dave here, Neil. I've got a ticket. I'm coming down Tuesday. We have to write a song together. I want to do two songs I want to do one Dave-does-Neil and another Neil-does-Dave'. I had to very gently put him off. But it was quite a fascinating concept."

Mega-house?

Sherrod: "Crowded Death."

Interview over, it's back to rehearsals for the show.

"We're giving Auckland its due. It's hometown.We want to make it special and we're treating it to some degree in the spirit of the shows I remember Split Enz putting on way, way back - the buck-a-heads where they had a bit of time to think about it."

He hints the Town Hall pipe organ may come into play but doesn't want to say much else.

"I really wouldn't want to pre-empt anything because I wouldn't want people to have any preconceptions - in case it doesn't come off."

LOWDOWN

Who: Neil Finn and Crowded House
When and where: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday 8th of April
Also: New album Intriguer released in June