Crowded House 5: Recurring Dream and Afterglow

After ten years, four albums, and the addition and subtraction of new and old members, Crowded House called it quits with a farewell concert and a hits collection. Recurring Dream shuffled four tracks from each of the albums, all of which were actually singles somewhere in the world. Being the ‘90s, three new tracks were included, and unfortunately, none suggested that the band was leaving potential untapped. “Not The Girl You Think You Are” and “Instinct” rumble along, exposing the hole drummer Paul Hester left when he’d quit the band a few years before. “Everything Is Good For You” is a little better, but hardly as exciting as the actual hits.

Those underwhelming new tracks notwithstanding, it’s still an excellent introduction to the band. After all, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” still belongs on any list of classic 20th century pop music, along with “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “Yesterday” and so forth. (More exciting to fans overseas was the “Special Edition”, which added an entertaining live disc compiled from several shows. The water was muddied somewhat some 14 years later with the pointedly titled The Very Very Best Of Crowded House, which duplicated all but five tracks from Recurring Dream, replacing those with the execrable “Chocolate Cake”, two more songs from Together Alone, and two others from the current century.)

Right in line with the dwindling interest the American public showed in the band over the years, it should be of little surprise that an outtakes collection (of sorts) was released by the end of the century. Afterglow offers mostly unreleased songs spanning their career, from “Recurring Dream” (which predates the debut, and explains the title of the hits album) to “Help Is Coming”, a gloomy but enticing song from the never-finished fifth album.

They’re not all hidden gems; “My Telly’s Gone Bung” is a jokey Paul Hester song that would have worked best as a B-side. By the same token, “I Love You Dawn” and “Lester”, despite their tunefulness, are too personal (the former about Neil Finn’s wife, the latter about his dog) to have fit within an album sequence. Still, those are just a handful of songs included here that were early contenders for Woodface before that album merged with a Finn Brothers project. A clean mix of “Private Universe” without the percussive effects helps reveal that song’s qualities; two other refugees from the Together Alone era (“I Am In Love” and “You Can Touch”) are nice surprises as well.

Only after ingesting the four individual albums should Afterglow be tackled, but chances are it will be worth it. It too was included as part of the pantheon when the Deluxe Editions came out, rather than its contents being farmed out to the bonus discs for the studio albums. The three new songs from Recurring Dream appear on this bonus disc, along with demos for each. Further songs from the band’s last days appear, signifying a “different” band, even more so from Together Alone, and closer to the jarring sound of Neil’s eventual solo album.

Crowded House Recurring Dream: The Very Best Of Crowded House (1996)—3½
Crowded House Afterglow (2000)—3½
2016 Deluxe Edition: same as 2000, plus 14 extra tracks
Crowded House The Very Very Best Of Crowded House (2010)—3½