It’s a good time to be Neil Finn—though, based on our conversation, he doesn’t exactly spend his days basking in the glow of his legacy. “I don’t dwell on the old records that much,” he says with his usual New Zealand calm. “After I finish a record, I seldom listen to it.” Must be nice to be the guy who wrote “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and still feel like your best work is ahead of you.
The new Crowded House album Gravity Stairs finds Finn and company—now including sons Liam and Elroy—once again reshaping their iconic sound into something warmer, trippier, and more communal. “It’s got a dreamy sort of psychedelic quality,” Finn says. “We try and make a sound that is the sum total of our personalities.” Which, when you’re literally jamming with your children, might explain the album’s emotional intelligence and occasional existential curveballs.
The title track references a literal set of stairs the family vacations near—ones so steep they’ve attributed their gravitational pull to iron deposits dragging them back toward the underworld. “It takes more energy these days,” Finn admits, “and you have to fight a little bit harder.” Age and perspective haven’t dulled him—they’ve just shifted the battle upstream.
But Gravity Stairs isn’t all metaphysical burdens and poetic malaise. “Night Song,” the album’s closer, began as a 16-minute jam on a Prophet synth that turned into three tracks (with six more in the vault). “It may begin the next record,” Finn hints. And now we all want the Kid A version of Crowded House.
Even “Oh Hi,” the album’s lead single, has more behind it than a breezy hook. The song evolved in tandem with Finn’s work supporting the So They Can Foundation, which helps build schools in rural Kenya and Tanzania. “I was intent to make the song stand on its own legs,” he says, “but it is created for and inspired by these kids.” The upcoming video features them reacting to the song. “It doesn’t feel like the traditional white savior narrative,” Finn adds. “We’re all going to benefit from these kids getting an education.”
Lyrically, the record walks that Neil Finn tightrope: plainly emotional, yet sonically expansive. “I was kind of fearful of exposing myself before,” he admits. “Now I’m more willing to be direct.” And then he casually drops lines like “If I end up forgetting what I had to say, you will still hear my humming on the last day,” which should be engraved somewhere—possibly on all of us.
There’s also a track written with brother Tim. “He’ll have a title, which is really handy,” Finn laughs. “Takes care of a lot of the heavy lifting.” Crowded House, it seems, has become a family business. But not the corporate kind—the kind where you look across the dinner table and someone’s holding a guitar and asking for your opinion on a second verse.
The fact that Crowded House is still evolving, still taking swings, still quietly experimenting with weird synths and heavy topics and sibling harmonies, makes Gravity Stairs feel less like a comeback and more like a dispatch from the front lines of whatever the hell pop music is supposed to be in 2024.
“It’s not just about our career anymore,” Finn says. “It feels like something more.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
