The band’s Gravity Stairs Tour is in support of its eighth studio album of the same name, released on May 31 via BMG. The day of the album release the band played a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City — a crowded house for Crowded House.
Produced by the band with Steven Schram, “Gravity Stairs” showcases Crowded House’s current incarnation featuring Neil Finn, Nick Seymour, Mitchell Froom, Elroy Finn and Liam Finn.
Froom is a longtime friend and close collaborator of the band. He was a producer and keyboardist featured on the group’s first three albums, helping shape the then-trio’s distinctive sound. All these years later, he’s officially joined Crowded House as its keyboardist in-studio and on stage.
“Mitchell agreed that he would join a tour with the band if we did the original songs faithful to the original recordings,” said bassist Nick Seymour. “We had somewhat strayed in terms of how we would deliver those songs. He felt there was an integrity to delivering the songs the way they were recorded. I’ve really enjoyed that; I’d forgotten how simple or instinctive those parts were.”
Crowded House has also welcomed two gifted musicians who literally grew up around the band: Neil’s sons, Liam and Elroy. Liam, who has released a series of acclaimed albums starting in 2007, is on guitar and vocals (see: the pop mastery of “The Howl” for details). Elroy, a multi-instrumentalist who released his debut “Elroy” in 2019, is on drums.
“That’s been fun, trying to get the authentic tones of those early records,” Liam said. “We are still playing with looseness and an alive spirit. But getting those nuances, you can see people visibly in the crowd going, ‘Oh, he did that little slide,’ and it’s really satisfying.”
With longstanding musical partnerships and kin uniting together, with Neil Finn and Nick Seymour still at the band’s core, the current lineup beautifully recreates the old sounds and has also honed the jangly, ethereal and dreamy pop found on “Gravity Stairs.”
The album deals heavily in all facets of the human condition; it’s as contemplative as it is melodic as it is sentimental. Much of the lyrics mull over mortality, saluting the past while also ringing in the future of Crowded House.
The name of the album was inspired by a heavy stone staircase near where Neil Finn vacations.
“The Gravity Stairs are symbolic of the struggle to ascend, acknowledging the opposing forces of the weight on the mechanics of living,” Neil said in a press release. “It’s an act of will every day.”
The cover art for “Gravity Stairs” is a pastiche of the Beatles’ album, “Revolver,” from 1966. “Revolver” is often regarded as a transitional record for the Beatles, around the time they ditched the bubblegum suits for proto-psychedelia rock music. Comparisons between the two records, at least in terms of respective sonic shifts, could be made.
But Seymour, who has designed or co-designed all of the band’s album covers and artwork, said, if anything, the parallels were motivated subconsciously.
“I’ve always done the record sleeves with portraits of the members of the band… include devices that indicate something about their character or them, or the making of the record,” Seymour said. “It’s pretty intuitive, and I’m never sure what is informing it, in terms of hidden meaning or some sort of suggestion of the musical content, but those things usually are in there.”
Liam added that that process is much like how the music develops as well, with the ambiguity of certain songs, how they might fit together in an album’s overarching narrative, etc.
The band spent much of the “Gravity Stairs” sessions in Byron Bay, a coastal town in Australia with many elements of a rainforest: snakes, spiders, lizards and torrential rains — all of which might explain the lush, swelling sounds on the new record.
“The songs are so obviously informed by the time we were having,” Liam said. “But when you’re making it, you’re just trying to make the best thing you can make. We’ve always been a jammy kind of band, but it’s gotten to a new height now. We trust each other and we can kind of go in any direction we choose. There’s no rules. It’s really free.”
Contact this contributing writer at branberry100@gmail.com.
How to go
What: Crowded House on the Gravity Stairs Tour
Where: The Rose at The Heights, 6800 Executive Blvd., Huber Heights
When: 8 p.m. Sept. 10
Tickets: ticketmaster.com; Tickets are still available
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