The dream was never over

It can be hard to imagine - and even accept - iconic band line-ups with apparent interlopers. Think of the unfortunate Adam Lambert, depping for Freddie Mercury in Queen, or Ray Wilson replacing Phil Collins in Genesis, for just the one album. But while not as left-field an appointment as, say, Liam Gallagher joining a reformed Boyzone, Neil Finn’s 2018 replacement of Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac was one I wouldn’t have imagined in a hundred years. 

When they joined the mighty Mac in 1975 Buckingham and then-partner Stevie Nicks heralded the band’s metamorphosis from worthy British blues legends to the all-conquering behemoth that made Rumours, took drugs and did a lot of bed hopping, largely with each other. So when Buckingham was apparently unceremoniously fired in January 2018, following an artistic bust-up, Finn being parachuted in to do Buckingham’s voice and lead guitar parts seemed a little outré. Not that Fleetwood Mac and Finn aren’t suited to each other, or that Finn wasn’t a credible replacement. 

Perhaps it was the notion of Finn, lead singer and main creative force of one significant band, joining an outfit firmly established in the firmament of classic bands, as, essentially, a session player, that felt somewhat odd. Even Finn himself was surprised to be invited to tour with the Mac. “It was just crazy really – although it’s amazing how things become normal,” Finn told The Guardian this week. “[You’re] standing in rehearsal and singing with Stevie [Nicks] and Christine [McVie], with John McVeigh and Mick Fleetwood, one of the greatest rhythm sections of all time. But within a week or two, you’re just making music with people. It was an unfamiliar role for me…being a part of the machine.”

That machine, however, led to an unexpected - and, from my point of view, very welcome - bi-product: it inspired Finn to bring Crowded House out of cold storage. The result is Dreamers Are Waiting, the band’s first album in a decade and 35 years after their eponymous debut introduced Finn’s McCartney-esque knack for sweet melodies, via songs like Don’t Dream It’s Over, Something So Strong and World Where You Live. It’s also, incredibly, 25 years since they said goodbye to 100,000 fans in front of the Sydney Opera House. The Farewell To The World live album resulting from it remains one of my go-to listens to this day, though there’s a residual sadness to it, being the last time Finn’s “best friend”, drummer Paul Hester was in the band. He succumbed to depression in 2005. 

Since 2010’s band release Intriguer, Finn has released two solo albums, Dizzy Heights and Out Of Silence, both of which saw him collaborate increasingly with his sons Liam and Elroy, as well as brother (and fellow former Split Enz member) Tim. Critics will have it that neither Finn’s solo work or post-Millennium releases from Crowded House have lived up to the band’s opening run of albums, but I would staunchly disagree. Because uniform to them all is that remarkable Finn talent for perfect song structure.

Picture: Kerry Brown

Despite the absence of Finn, co-founding bassist Nick Seymour and their longtime producer Mitchell Froom for a decade, Dreamers Are Waiting is infused with a freshness that Finn himself admits came out of his Fleetwood Mac stint. “I was going into this record thinking, ‘I would like to gravitate the band toward songs that would be great to play onstage and where I’m stretching my voice and that are upbeat,’” he said in The Guardian interview. “It made the album a little less melancholy and ballad-oriented, as some of my records have sometimes tended to be.”

It certainly zips along. Like Paul Weller’s recent Fat Pop, Dreamers Are Waiting’s 12 tracks are neat and concise, all coming in under four minutes, framing those Finn melodies and vocal harmonies with absolute perfection. While there isn’t a standout hit of the distinction of Don’t Dream It’s Over or Weather With You, there’s no lack of immediacy, due in part to Froom’s pristine production work which draws out the many layers of the writing and musicianship. It might mean a couple of listens to fully appreciate, but even if, as Finn says, it’s a little different, it’s all the better for it, as you soak in all the classic Crowded House textures while absorbing the new sonic influences that takes it all beyond the Beatley expectation fans might be still want.

An example of this comes late on with Love Isn’t Hard At All, a song that lends itself more to New Order than anything I’ve heard from Crowded House before, with its syncopation of Seymour’s bass, a fibrous guitar riff and layers of synths making it infectiously anthemic without being overstated. This, then, is the hallmark of the album. From start to finish, it soothes in places, lifts in others, but all within a range that manages to encompass plenty of variety. 

This isn’t, however, just a collection of pleasant tunes - there’s something else going on in Finn’s writing. Though written before the word “coronavirus” entered public consciousness, Dreamers Are Waiting finds him reflecting on the importance of family, though some of its songs provide a view on Trump’s America, where Finn moved in 2018 for his sojourn with Fleetwood Mac, setting up home in LA’s swanky Los Feliz neighbourhood. Having a ringside seat shaped Finn’s view of the future, which explains Playing With Fire’s somewhat vituperative lyrics. Likewise, Whatever You Want, which nods back to the 80s vibe of Split Enz and thrusts in the lyric: “This man is a fake/But they will follow him down to the edge of the cliff.” It is something of a departure. “I don’t normally venture into those areas [lyrically], because far better minds than me are able to express it,” Finn told The Guardian. But, he says, the words came out, and he found himself giving subtle commentary on a land divided.

There’s more on the dark, vaudevillian To The Island, which examines the “bigger picture items”, Finn says, shaped by the priorities of his native New Zealand, but framed with a world view of a society strained by the you-know-what. This album is far from maudlin, however, even if the gentle shuffle of Too Good For This World hints at a sense of frustration, while the gorgeous harmony-drenched Start Of Something balances this with an open conversation of hope amid a world in turmoil. Show Me The Way, written by Liam Finn, broods delectably, while Sweet Tooth dips into his father’s quirky sense, delivering a searingly good guitar solo in the process. It is probably the closest Dreamers Are Waiting gets to Crowded House’s more jaunty excursions of old, like Pineapple Head or It’s Only Natural.

Taken as a whole, Crowded House have always managed to deliver engaging rock music without rock excess. That’s not a polite alternative, by the way, to likening them to Coldplay. Dreamers Are Waiting is, without doubt, an eminently soothing record without being somnolent. It is, without doubt, a glorious return for a band which, over the last 35 years, have produced some of the most listenable records in my collection. That’s a semi-vacuous statement, I know,  but I ran out of superlatives when talking about this band a long time ago.

Stretching legs - why long-haul could be getting longer

As this blog commented on last month, air travel leaves much to be desired. For the most part, getting crammed into a toothpaste tube with wings is simply a necessary evil for those of us who have to travel for business or personal reasons.

Living and working in Paris and, increasingly, London, flying just about edges out taking the Eurostar between these two cities, a journey which, since last summer especially, has carried the considerable risk of the train getting stuck in or just outside the Channel Tunnel thanks to miscreants disrupting services in Calais (yeah, I know, desperate refugees escaping unspeakable horrors in their homeland getting in the way of my highfalutin' business meeting...). Call me precious but I really don't fancy the idea of being locked in a carriage without air conditioning or electricity for the nine or ten hours that some Eurostar passengers have been forced to endure while the authorities try and sort out track intrusions.

This does, however, bring me to a travel horror of a different sort: long-haul flying. Though my musings on aviation might suggest otherwise, I'm really not that well travelled. I've been to Asia just the once (via a fifteen-hour flight from San Francisco to Taiwan, on which, for the only time in my life, I managed to get some proper sleep courtesy of misreading the dosage instructions of sleeping pills I was offered). After that, the longest I've spent in the air has been between Europe and the US West Coast.

When I first flew from London to Los Angeles in 1992, I had barely been anywhere, let alone the other side of the continent on the other side of the Atlantic. I had no idea what 12 and a half hours sat in the smoking section of a Virgin 747 would be like, especially with a chain-smoking bit-part actor next to me, knocking back V&Ts like they were going out of fashion while boring me rigid about episodes of Murder She Wrote that he'd appeared in (since IMDB-verified, I have to admit). Until he passed out.

Nothing could prepare me for the world of disorientation that jet lag would induce for the first time. The next morning I drove out of my airport hotel and, instead of heading towards the 405 freeway and north to Hollywood, I drove east into South Central, barely months after the summer riots of 1992. A young English tourist conspiculously driving a shiny new Dodge Dynasty through Hawthorne was not the wisest decision jet lag could have mis-made for me. So, by the time I realised I was on Rosencrans Avenue, near its junction with Normandie Avenue and therefore epicentre of the trouble, I decided that a U-turn might be wise.

In the years since, including a spell living in California itself, I've grown used to the endlessness of flying out West from Europe, though these flights are becoming somewhat more tolerable as the aircraft servicing the routes have become newer and more efficient. However, I realise that these flights pale into insignificance when compared to other routes.

Last week an Airbus A380 of the Emirates airline made what is believed to be the longest non-stop scheduled commercial flight by distance (the record for duration is still held by a Quantas flight from Dallas to Sydney which took 16 hours and 55 minutes). However, this could be eclipsed by Emirates commencing a route from Dubai to Panama City (due to launch this month but postponed - again - until next year) that will clock in at 17 hours and 35 minutes, though this is still shorter by distance than the Auckland trip.

New planes with better engine technology are enabling these marathon flights, which no doubt benefit the bottom lines of the big carriers, such as the rapidly expanding Emirates and Qatar Airways, as well as Australia's Quantas which, through geographic necessity, has always had to be at the end of the longest routes on Earth.

But what do they do for the passengers? Given how the business of air travel is all about balancing profits with the passenger experience, the thought of spending three-quarters of a whole day crammed into an economy class seat fills me with mortal dread. Cabin innovations on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A380 and A350 are supposed to improve cabin pressure, air circulation and even ambient light, but from my own experience, nothing can relieve the strain of being squashed into economy class rows, where the legroom has grown ever-tighter, and even the number of seats per row has increased.

Unless you have a generous employer or are one of those air miles nerds who apparently can fly anwhere in a premium cabin by some form of black art, long-haul really is not fun. And as economy class sections become more cramped, the armrest duels, the seat-recline mind games and the awkward social etiquette of getting past (or clambering over) two or even four other sleeping passengers to get to the toilet during a very long-haul flight is the stuff of nightmares.

Twitter/Christopher Adams

The New Zealand Herald's Christopher Adams live blogged from the Emirates Dubai-Auckland flight to see how his fellow passengers were holding up, though he admits that he had booked into business class, making any immediate drawbacks around him of the sixteen-and-a-half-hour flight a clear case of 'First World problems'.

Exploring the economy cabin, Adams didn't see any greater suffering than any other long-haul flight. The 500-seat A380 wasn't completely full, either, possibly the result of fuel economy weight restrictions (Emirates will fly the smaller Boeing 777 on this route on a regular basis).

This begs the question of whether such a non-stop journey of endurance would be popular to begin with. Super-long distance flights, such as those from European cities to Australia or New Zealand, get broken up by layovers in Dubai or Doha. Some choose to stop off for a day in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Personally, I'd say that was sensible, even if it did cut down on time at the eventual destination. All I know is that if I ever brave the journey Down Under - a trip fraught with claustrophobia on the way and the world's deadliest things that could kill you when you get there - I could never do the journey in one go, even if the technology existed for an airliner to fly non-stop.

As it is, there is no shortage of routes, notably starting out in the Middle East, which clock in at over 8,000 miles, and which require supreme stamina to endure in all but the most luxurious of flying classes. Perhaps its no surprise, then, how airlines like Emirates and Qatar, with their reputation for opulance in the premium seats, can sustain flying the current crop of jumbo jets from Dubai to Auckland, Los Angeles or Houston. These airlines advertise themselves as being luxury experiences - one has a TV commercial suggesting that your travel itinerary could take you to New York before whisking yourself off to a tropical island in the South Pacific, before you then travel to Dubai. Clearly, this particular airline's advertising agency had no demographic in mind that would fly anything less than first class, because putting in the miles like that in the cattle section would surely not be any fun at all.