Crowded House’s Neil Finn names “the essential songwriter album”
Rock and roll has always prided itself on having great songwriters. Although most artists might get into the game wanting to create the filthiest sounds imaginable, the ones that last can take the foundations of the music they love and turn it into a work of art throughout the runtime of a project. While Neil Finn may have been born out of the traditional songwriter mould, he still thinks that one of his sound foundations came from the art rock world.
When first starting Crowded House, Finn had been working on different songs on acoustic guitar before transferring it to the studio. Despite the lush soundscapes available on songs like ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’, the track comes alive in the same way whenever Finn straps on an acoustic guitar and sings the melody over basic chords.
Much like Finn’s approach to adding layers after the fact, David Bowie found himself in a similar position when testing his first batch of songs. Although he had one failed attempt at doing different theatrical rock on his debut, Bowie would eventually push the limits of where he could take traditional rock and roll with albums like Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold The World.
Then again, Bowie was constantly pushing towards something bigger, and his next album would turn the rock world on its head. Arriving in the dwindling days of the counterculture, Hunky Dory contained some of the most lavish arrangements Bowie had ever created, including a handful of off-colour styles on tracks like ‘The Bewlay Brothers’ and ‘Queen Bitch’.
When listening to the album repeatedly, Finn still considered Bowie’s take on the singer/songwriter genre some of the most inventive in the rock canon. Talking to SPIN, Finn thought that the root of the album lies within its different approaches to the medium, recalling, “It’s an essential songwriters’ record. So many chords that elevate and melodies that soar made me aspire to using diminished chords and enigmatic abstract lyrics”.
While most nonmusicians might not see the complexities of Bowie’s work at first, the brain often knows when ‘The Starman’ takes things in a different direction. Throughout a song like ‘Quicksand’, Bowie uses different diminished chords that sound completely discordant when not heard in context, only to turn into a delicate stroll through different harmonic layers as Bowie weaves together a beautiful tune.
The approach to lyricism is also equally abstract on tracks like ‘Life on Mars?’. While the tune may have been cheekily poking fun at Frank Sinatra throughout its short runtime, Bowie’s esoteric reflections about life on other planets are underscored by dramatic uses of harmony, constantly sounding like it’s shifting keys before dropping the listener into one spellbinding moment after another.
While Finn would start making his music shortly after listening to Hunky Dory, Bowie was never interested in staying in one place for too long. By the time Crowded House had gotten started, Bowie had already gone through krautrock, post-rock, and finally pop, leaving a road map on how to experiment with one’s sound throughout his body of work.
