Album Review: Crowded House, "Woodface"

Hey, you lot at the back of the class, quit sneering! OK, so CROWDED HOUSE ain't mean dude rock n' rollers from Hell, they've got short hair, and they're 30 something (shock, horror, probe!). So fuckin' what? It's time the trads out there stopped being so tunnel-visioned and precious, y'know, just loosen up.

Now that my diatribe is over, it gives me great pleasure to announce that Woodface is a very good, albeit a slightly flawed record!

The origins of Crowded House began in New Zealand many moons ago when a zany art rock group called SPLIT ENZ were formed. In the early/mid 80s they split up, a few of Split Enz's former members, led by principal songwriter Neil Finn went on to form Crowded House, and have already established themselves as a gold-and-platinum-selling act in North America and Australasia. Neil's brother Tim (also an ex-Split Enzer) has now joined the group, and with the release of their third album Woodface they look set to carve out a healthy niche in the UK.

Crowded House specialise in immaculately crafted, timeless mature pop (shades of THE BEATLES/SQUEEZE) that usually possess a melodic and lyrical twist. Equally comfortable with melancholic pop and the more jaunty up-tempo numbers, "Chocolate Cake" best represents their livelier nature. It's a humorous swipe at some of America's more absurd aspects. Whilst on the other hand "Four Seasons In One Day" and "Fall at Your Feet" are infused with a haunting melancholic hue.

The songs get a little too twee and wistful towards the end but "I'm Still Here" the manic, tongue-in-cheek tale of a desperate partygoer, ends the album with a bang.

Anyway, it might interest/reassure you that MEGADETHS's Dave "Skydiver" Mustaine regularly drops in on their concerts and that AEROSMITH's Steven "Mighty Mouth" Tyler has slipped on and off more condoms listening to Crowded House on his turntable than anything else he's currently playing. So, if nothing else, it might improve your love/sex lives.

Grade B+

Mark Liddell

Riff Raff

August 1991

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!