Crowded House's best work (Together Alone - Crowded House)

Member Name: ajaybee

Product:	Together Alone - Crowded House
Date:	13/04/01 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wonderful songs

Disadvantages: n/a

TOGETHER ALONE marks Crowded House at their creative peak and is easily their finest album to date, a combination of simple, wistful pop songs and a few songs with a possibly more sinister undercurrent, a recurring theme throughout a lot of Crowded House's work. The album was Crowded House's most commerically successful...such a shame that they had to split just a year or so later.

The album opens with 'Kare Kare', one of those bizarre tracks with utterly nonsensical lyrics, but which still manages to sound great, is certainly one of the album's best tracks. 'Black & White Boy' is also great, a bit heavier than most of Crowded House's stuff, which is also quite dark...not your average Crowded House track.

Elsewhere though the album charts through familiar Crowded House territory: heartwarming, melodic tracks such as 'Distant Sun', the sparky 'Locked Out', and the melancholy 'Private Universe' and 'Fingers of Love' are all essential listens. Four of these tracks appeared on the 1996 'Best Of' compilation so should be familiar to many people (that album sold by the bucketload), but there's not a bad track on here.

The tempo varies quite a bit, proving that there has always been more substance to Crowded House than their only hit of any significance, the bizarre 'Weather With You'. It's all extremely listenable, there's not a bad track here out of the 13. Neil Finn is clearly an extremely talented songwriter (fans of his should check out the recently released ONE NIL album, which is far more acoustic based, as further ample proof of this) and has a wonderful voice which can adapt to any mood of track.

Should be ranked with the best rock/pop albums of the 1990s. Highly reccommended.

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