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Yesterday, we announced the recipients of the Seventh Annual Gold Bonus Disc Awards! Unsurprisingly, the deluxe reissues from Crowded House were among them! Today, Mike takes an in-depth look at these stellar reissues!
Depending on how you look at it, there are anywhere from seven (albums) to 14 (discs) to more than 200 (songs) reasons why Universal Music's Crowded House reissues stand tall in this writer's mind as the best catalog music campaign of 2016. But in the end, all it took was one.
Close your eyes for a moment. Breathe in and out. Think about the calendar you're about to take down from the wall. Consider the people and the things that made you smile, the hardships you've overcome, the times you emerged from adversity standing but beaten and could do nothing more than offer a shoulder to a crying friend--or take the shoulder offered before you. What's the one thing you wanted to hear, to feel like your troubles wouldn't last forever?
For me, I heard it at the end of the deluxe edition bonus disc of 1989's Temple of Low Men, the New Zealand group's sophomore album, just before a live rendition of "Better Be Home Soon," recorded in Melbourne in 1992, faded out. "Live in hope!" the eternally youthful Neil Finn commanded as he bade farewell to the audience. In three words, all the gloom and doom of 2016 lifted, as only Crowded House could do it.
And that's Crowded House in a nutshell, isn't it? Here is a group that, for three decades, has offered consistently beautiful, charming, idiosyncratic, smart pop music. Without ever explicitly spelling it out, Finn's music and lyrics speak to our wishes and aspirations--the audio equivalent of the first warm day of the year, the hug from a partner, that sort of thing. Could a catalogue project ever capture all of those things about the band?
That it does is an astounding achievement. The scope of the Crowded House reissue campaign--2CD deluxe editions of each of the band's seven albums (including 2000's rarities/outtakes set Afterglow), bundled with extraordinary demos, outtakes, B-sides, live cuts and packaged in a princely manner--is hard to comprehend. Harder still is parsing all the material offered, and putting it in the proper context of a band that has aged like a bottle of spirits without ever losing its spark.
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Perhaps, ultimately, the best way to regard it is as Finn himself does (as told to The Second Disc in an exclusive interview): "part of a continuum" of his total work. Indeed, only some of the bonus material can truly be credited to Crowded House: solo demos abound, and an early studio demo of "Hole in the River" from the band's first album, cut in 1984 with Finn, drummer Paul Hester (who provides a spirited rap refrain!), keyboardist Eddie Rayner and bassist Nigel Griggs, is essentially a Split Enz outtake.
And yet, the commonness of Finn on his own makes you appreciate the brilliant people he surrounded himself with in the studio. There's nimble bassist Nick Seymour, present on every record both sonically and visually (every reissue features incisive commentary on his spectacular album artwork); producers like Mitchell Froom (who added captivating R&B-style flourishes to the band's 1986 self-titled debut, as best heard on the smash hits "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong") and Youth (who turned 1993's Together Alone in to a sumptuous beating heart of a record--arguably their best); multi-instrumentalist Mark Hart, who helped expand the group's sonic palette in the mid-'90s and '00s; and Neil's brother Tim, whose contributions to 1991's Woodface avoid the easy traps of Split Enz Mk. II.
Then there are the band's two drummers, known well to fans and made even more respectable in these expanded presentations. The late Paul Hester's majestic lo-fi swing is a gem polished nicely by the remastering of the original records, and his off-the-wall humor and banter shines through much of the bonus material. (A session run-through of Temple's "Sister Madly," and the accompanying liner notes, reveal that Hessie's charisma nearly spilled over into a tongue-in-cheek solo project called We Like Loving Ladies.) And Matt Sherrod, who had the thankless task of replacing Finn's fallen comrade on the reunion albums Time on Earth (2007) and Intriguer (2010), is worth a second listen on these new deluxe editions. (Both of the albums are, really.)
Look, it's hard to put exactly into words what makes these reissues work as well as they do. Twelve hours of audio material from such a stellar band, essentially at once and with great packaging to boot, is a lot to sit with (but due credit to compiler/archivist Jeremy Ansell for doing it to perfection). But it really does come back to living in hope. It's something I wish for other fans--of Crowded House and our pleasant little web space--every time I draft a post: in the end, all we want is for music that's made us feel good, presented in a way that honors those feelings. For my money, Crowded House did it better than anyone else did this year--the ultimate exclamation point to an already stunning discography.
Listen to Crowded House here on Spotify!
Don't miss the full list of recipients of The Second Disc's 2016 Gold Bonus Disc Awards right here!
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I purchased Temple of Low Men, as it is my favorite album by this band. Many reviewers feel the remasters are highly compressed, giving them a shrill, brittle sound. I tend to agree. What's your take? Also, do you know of a similar effort to remaster the Split Enz catalogue? Thx
I agree with Dave. And I don't mind a little compression in my remasters. But these are brickwalled to the point of being unlistenable, which is tragic considering the under appreciated beauty of the Crowded House catalog.
I third this assessment re the sound. I had really high expectations of the audio - to be blunt - it is a mess to these ears. I really feel ripped off. I can't understand how this can happen to albums that have such musical quality. I know all stereos are different and there is, of course, an amount of subjectivity involved, but packaging and deluxe presentation is not why I purchase reissues. I have not owned Crowded House on CD before - I guess I am going to have to hunt down the old issues and see how they sound.
They are certainly compressed, but I personally don't find them unlistenable. I've been enjoying them quite a bit, actually. And everything else about them is first-rate. Just one man's opinion.
Agree, I have the original CDs which are nice, but to my ears these are a long way from unlistenable. Don't just judge by dr levels. Keep both and just acknowledge they are different.
Really liked the sentiments in Mike's piece, music never lets you down even in the darker times.
I do wish that the folks at Second Disc would pay attention and comment on the sound of CD and vinyl reissues. By this point, many of us who still buy physical media do so for whatever perceived benefits we hear (or imagine we hear). We're not archivists, most of us. I'm a Crowded House fan but will pass on these reissues based on the numerous criticisms I've read of the sound.
Thanks for writing, Madison. We appreciate your suggestion. However, it's not a matter of not paying attention; it's a matter of focus. The Second Disc is not an audiophile-focused site. There are numerous other, well-regarded sites on the 'net that offer detailed analyses of sound, which is perhaps the most subjective area of criticism out there. Our focus is, indeed, on the archival and historical aspect of these recordings. Though we do endeavor to comment on sound quality in a general sense (and often much more so, depending on the release - particularly those targeted at the audiophile market), that is not our central focus here. My apologies if you feel this is detrimental to the site, but there are many websites that complement our work and might give you the answers you're seeking, whether that's waveforms, a written analysis, or A/B comparisons to past releases. Hope this helps explain.
Joe - Thanks for the response, I appreciate it. I'm not an audiophile. I pay no attention to waveforms, I haven't sunk a fortune on equipment, and I don't visit the audiophile sites often because I'm not half as concerned with what concerns them. But sound matters to me, just as it does to probably everyone who visits this site, and it matters more now with streaming all but taking over, where differences in sound quality are frequently apparent even to old ears like mine. I'd appreciate just a sentence that addresses the issue. Has it been remastered, and if so, does it sound good? Something simple. Waves aside, this is subjective stuff. But a signal of attention would help me decide whether or not to buy.
Hi there, while that wasn't the author's purview for this particular review, please take a quick glance at our news articles and reviews. I'm confident that you'll find 99.9% of them address remastering to one degree or another - and certainly in terms of mentioning whether a title has been remastered or not, and more often than not, by whom. Please know that we're passionate about music and sound here (see our Second Disc Records tab above!), and seek to share that information on a daily basis with our readers - even if it's not possible in every published piece. Hope this helps, and thanks again for reading as well as for your comments!
I would rate the CH remasters as yes, compressed but still listenable. By comparison, I consider the Stones "remasters" from a few years back as unlistenable. "Temple Of Low Men" is also my favorite CH album, and "Into Temptation" in my Top 5 CH songs of all time. The additional material on these sets is a godsend, especially on "Time On Earth", because unless you bought an obscure 2006 "Don't Stop Now" CD5, you missed one of the greatest CH non-album songs of all time, "Lost Island". Just an awesome, heart-breaking, stunningly gorgeous ballad, and as equally dumbfounding that it was not included on the album. Several other can't-believe-it-wasn't-on-the-album gems such as "Instinct" & "Not The Girl You Think You Are" are on these sets, albeit those have been previously released on several CH best-of's. IMHO, however, no CH collection is complete without "Lost Island", so don't let all the mastering-bad-mouthing deny you hearing that track.
It's sad really that Neil has been "inspired" by the sound of the Radiohead mastering of the last couple of albums.
The mastering isn't very good. I was very disappointed that Neil "remastered" these so poorly especially considering all the bonus tracks on the second disc. I'm sticking to my original CDs for the studio albums.