Crowded House (Crowded House - Crowded House)

Member Name: davepridd

Product:	Crowded House - Crowded House
Date:	10/09/00 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Don't dream it's over

Disadvantages: The rest doesn't quite stand up to it

The problem with this, the first Crowded House album, is that it is not as consistant as their other albums; although all of the songs are still very good the rest of the tracks have a very hard job in trying to stand up to 'Don't dream it's over'. I think that this song is definately a contender for the best pop song ever. If you haven't heard it before it is worth buying the album for this song alone; the melody is perfect and the backing is beautiful but also quite unusual with the chord structure changing on each chorus.

The rest of the material is good, but just not as good as this track; other highlights include the vocal harmonies to 'World where you live', or the way that the start to the album is so immediate with the first thing you hear being Neil Finn singing "she came all the way from America" on 'Mean to me', before the music begins.

The album has more of an up-tempo pop feel to it than 'Woodface' or 'Together Alone', with lots of brass and loud, high-pitched vocals giving a sound quite similar to the Beautiful South's 'Choke' album. Some of the material does sound very much of it's time (1986), but this is not necessarily a bad thing, and this still a very good album.

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