Crowded House – Saturday Sun
Their greatest hits album is fantastic. This, though…
[Video][Website]
[4.33]
Jonathan Bogart: Even when “new Crowded House single” was the exact four words necessary to make me desperate to hear a song, I wouldn’t have liked this one very much. “The madness is won” and “my head is alright” are no doubt very good things to tell your therapist, but in pop music they’re pretty damn boring.
[4]
Chuck Eddy: They struck me as one of history’s blandest (and least powerful) excuses for powerpop even in their anal-compulsive alleged heyday, and they certainly don’t seem to have improved since. Best you can say about this is that the chorus maybe hints at a “mood”, on first run-through (i.e., I do like the idea of a song about a late Saturday afternoon, as the game wanes). After that… snore.
[3]
Martin Skidmore: I hadn’t realised they were still going, and I can’t say I am pleased to find they are (well, going again, really). This muddy soft-rock number rambles on for a while, with random guitar playing thrown in occasionally to no effect. Time for another decade off.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: I’m sure this will garner some “past-their-prime” comments, but even though I’m not overly familiar with Crowded House’s back catalog, this is lovely: cocooning and graceful, with just enough energy not to fall away. Gorgeous chord progressions, too.
[7]
Pete Baran: I can’t say “Saturday Sun” is a poor relation to their other hits, as it’s cut from a pretty similar cloth and seems to have more guts than much of their 90s output. I can’t say I would seek it out, but I am almost certain it probably cheers up Ken Bruce when he gets to play it, so good luck to them.
[5]
Alfred Soto: I have enough moments when I’ll call America’s collective shrug to Neil Finn’s post-1988 career a rank offense, mitigating my suspicion that he’s rather dull and a bit of a sap. Like many aging melodists, his craft succeeds insofar as it pillages chord gestures and mixing board tricks without much regard for autobiographical correlatives. In short, I don’t know why the hell anyone should care about Neil Finn when you can find plenty of examples of “thoughtful” “melodic” pop on the charts. Then I remember “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Fall At Your Feet.”
[5]
Crowded House are consisdered power pop?
Liked this when I listened to it, never got around to writing anything.
Two of their singles count as powerpop to me: “Mean To Me” and “Locked Out” with maybe “World Where You Live” as borderline. I guess you could make a case for the odd album track like “Black & White Boy” too. But generally they were not power pop beyond the occasional foray. Too polite about their classicism.
This is about half as good as, say, “Chocolate Cake”.
I’ve heard people call them powerpop; never bought it myself. (But then, to me, lots of the time, powerpop means ’80s 38 Special and Rick Springfield.)
Powerpop* means “YES! WE REMEMBER THE BEATLES IN DIREST NEW WAVEY TIMES (BUT DO NOT SPEAK OF SUCH THINGS)”
I like the grumbly opening drone, and — being very tremendously old — i am kind of pleased to thinking about a ACTUAL BAND for a change. Indeed, I am old enough to remember seeing Split Enz on The Old Grey Whistle test, and taping (by placing my cassette machine in front of to the TV) a live show the BBCX broadcast in 1977-ish. Split Enz! They kind of invented herky-jerky-quirky — which i didn’t really get and to peruse at my leisure (I bet I still have the tape, which I never once re-listened to).
Anyway, whevever I have happened by him since, I can’t help feeling Mr Finn is still trying to hard to escape the “herky-jerky-quirky” problem, because CH are always the opposite of it. Except never once in a way that improved on it. 4.
*In the UK, anyway.
Easy, Alfredo Sauce. Give Intriguer a chance. Half of you people sound like you checked out of the House sometime in the mid-90’s. Neil’s output since then – be it with C.H. or solo or with Tim – has been excellent; every album has at least a few songs that any pop aficionado would give his or her left nipple to have written. For any naysayers on this latest album, just at least check out “Twice If You’re Lucky” – even the grumpiest of you must give credit where it is due (this song is, to borrow an old cliche, a “gem.”) When you love a band, you must allow them to grow, to explore – and that’s what a lot of Intriguer is. The melodies are there, the soundscape rich; let the beauty unfold in its own time.
Easy, Alfredo Sauce
OH SNAP THAT IS ALSO FOOD!
checked out of the House = OH SNAP as well
(this song is, to borrow an old cliche, a “gem.”
Return it.
Also: fuck you for using a my oafish 9th grade English teacher’s favorite moniker.