Crowded House – Afterglow (Deluxe Edition)
Released several years after the breakup of the original lineup of Crowded House, Afterglow was a collection of songs that had been relegated to B-sides, to soundtracks, and sometimes to the cutting room floor, never making it to an album but becoming a favorite in the band’s live show. There was material concurrent with all four of the band’s studio albums at the time, and it was something of a bittersweet revelation of how prolific the band was.
But if the original release was a fond reminder of that, the deluxe expanded 2-CD edition is a jaw-dropping revelation. It was known that, after the departure of Paul Hester from the drum seat, an attempt was made to soldier onward with Peter Jones, who had toured with the band after Hester’s abrupt mid-tour exit in 1994. Jones was heard on drums on the original Afterglow‘s incredibly atmospheric track “Help Is Coming”, so obvious some recording was done with him. But the biggest surprise of the second disc is a stretch of material revealing just how much was recorded with Jones – a series of songs that basically amount to an album side. So yes, the deluxe edition of Afterglow brings us half of a Crowded House album that could have been, and really should have been, because the studio demos are so polished – and just as atmospheric as “Help Is Coming” – that they’re sharper than some bands’ final studio masters, and they reveal a band that could very well have continued despite the unplanned personnel change.
After Neil Finn’s home demos of such songs as “Instinct” and “Everything Is Good For You”, the Finn/Seymour/Hart/Jones lineup returns with “Anthem”, a song Finn unearthed from the archives as a charity single a few years earlier, and while it lacks the polish of a finished track, it does show an arrangement that’s been worked out an honed, complete with vocal harmonies. The next track by this post-Together Alone lineup is even more surprising, featuring Mark Hart singing lead on a song that he wrote, “I Don’t Know You”. Again, the song is presented in a somewhat rough state, but one with a lot of promise. Hart eventually reclaimed “I Don’t Know You” for his solo album Nada Sonata, but there’s something stripped-down, bluesy, and incredibly catchy about the Crowded House rendition that may well make it superior to Hart’s final studio version. This should’ve been a single, though one wonders how a single without Finn’s voice (or writing credit) front and center might have been able to navigate the band’s complex internal politics.
Even more songs follow, including the trippy “A Taste Of Something Divine”, which could almost be in late ’90s U2’s wheelhouse rather than what anyone would’ve been expecting from Crowded House. If this is what the band could’ve accomplished with Jones on drums, it’s kind of a glimpse into an alternate universe where Together Alone was followed by even edgier, more out-there changes in style.
Following a nice, folksy rendition of “Spirit Of The Stairs” (a favorite in the Crowdies’ live set), this lineup drops one last surprise with a hard-hitting rendition of “Loose Tongue”, a song which eventually migrated to Finn’s first solo album, 1998’s Try Whistling This. Upon hearing that album in 1998, I remember asking myself “Why was it necessary to break up Crowded House to do this album?”, and this version of “Loose Tongue” really brings that question back. There was very little of Try Whistling This that couldn’t have been done by the full Crowded House lineup.
But the alternate timeline in which Crowded House with Peter Jones in tow ventures into more adventurous musical territory ends there; the rest of disc two is rounded out with the three “new” songs from the 1996 greatest hits album, “Instinct”, “Not The Girl You Think You Are”, and “Everything Is Good For You”, all of them “safer”, more traditional Crowded House songs with 
Mitchell Froom at the mixing board and Paul Hester on drums.
The musical equivalent of deleted scenes is what Afterglow was always about, but the expanded edition offers a truly eye-opening glimpse into what could have been if Together Alone had been but the beginning of an experimental phase, and not the end of one. Very few expanded reissues of existing albums justify the double-dip like this one does.
… Read more
Disc One
- I Am In Love (4:37)
- Sacred Cow (3:36)
- You Can Touch (3:45)
- Help Is Coming (4:48)
- I Love You Dawn (2:33)
- Dr. Livingston (3:56)
- My Tellys’ Gone Bung (3:10)
- Private Universe (4:07)
- Lester (2:19)
- Anyone Can Tell (3:35)
- Recurring Dream (3:23)
- Left Hand (2:57)
- Time Immemorial (4:06)
Disc Two
- I Am In Love (Home Demo) (2:07)
- Instinct (Home Demo) (2:03)
- Spirit Of The Stairs (Home Demo) (3:39)
- I’m So Scared Of Losing I Can’t Compete (Home Demo) (2:11)
- Everything Is Good For You (Home Demo) (3:14)
- Not The Girl You Think You Are (Home Demo) (3:00)
- Anthem (3:31)
- I Don’t Know You (Studio Demo) (3:40)
- A Taste Of Something Divine (Studio Demo) (4:14)
- Spirit Of The Stairs (Studio Demo) (4:55)
- Loose Tongue
- Rough Mix (3:51)
- Instinct (3:06)
- Everything Is Good For You (3:52)
- Not The Girl You Think You Are (4:08)
Released by: Capitol Records
Release date: November 18, 2016
Disc one running time: 46:51
Disc two running time: 47:31
This soundtrack is an odd bird. There’s a smattering of clips from R.E.M.’s film score, a few songs from the band, a couple of performances by Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton, a handful of pieces of source music from significant Kaufman appearances, and one song that doesn’t fit any of these categories but does show up briefly in the movie. I’m sure there’s an audience for each category, but I have to think their intersection is a very small group.
The problem is that the album is both schizophrenic and short. There’s not enough orchestral music for this to appeal to fans of film scores, there’s not enough comedy for humor fans, and there’s not enough original Kaufman material to appeal to his fans. Once upon a time, the presence of “The Great Beyond” might have made this somewhat worthwhile for R.E.M. fans, but now you can get that song without the film dialogue on the band’s Warner Bros. best-of, and “Man On The Moon” is there as well. But if you’re looking for eclectic eccentricity, this might work for you.
track, “Area 7: Happy-Go-Lucky Mix”, is worthy of skipping every time – it sounds like it’s trying to find a whimsical tone, and it winds up being more annoying than anything.
It may seem silly to snatch up the music of a game I don’t even own (honestly, I’m not sure my system could handle it), but sometimes it’s worth it. Frank Klepacki carries on the proud, if unorthodox, tradition of tracking a wargame with some serious techno beats that wouldn’t be out of place in the club scene. The smooth groove of “Lone Trooper” and the slow-building jam of “Scouting” are some of the finest techno cuts I’ve heard, game or no game. “Mutants” kicks off with the slimiest slice of modern funk I’ve heard in a long time, and the menacing “Approach” track echoes the ticking clock percussion of some of the better cues from John Williams’ JFK score. “What Lurks” is a bit reminiscent of 
Following up on the not-quite-success of his amazing 1973 solo debut Boulders and some equally underground releases (commercial-success-wise, that is) with his band Wizzard, ELO co-founder Roy Wood regrouped and decided to do another truly solo album. Woody can play a few dozen instruments, you see, so locking this guy into a recording studio by himself for a few weeks with a fresh batch of songs is not a problem. What he emerged with, while not quite up to the innovation level of Boulders, is still stunning.
Coming off of what could have been a glorious one-off experiment, the Afro-Celts decided to grab for a little more exposure by starting what has now become a tradition in their work: high-profile guest artists. None other than Sinead O’Connor kicks the proceedings off with her compassionate vocal for “Release”, for which she also wrote the anti-violence lyrics (the album is bookended with an instrumental version of “Release” as the last track, and O’Connor’s credit is the only one missing among the songwriters).
Despite generally favorable reception to their 1995 album One Hot Minute, the Red Hot Chili Peppers dropped out of sight for a while and came back strong – partly because of the return of original member John Frusciante, back from a long and torturous battle with drug addiction. Despite the addition of Dave Navarro as a replacement for Frusciante on that previous album, the vibe somehow wasn’t the same (even though it yielded the minor hit “Aeroplane”). Now the Chilis are back in force.
Ralf Illenberger returns for his third post-Narada effort on indie label In Joy Records, and this time he’s got another winner…and an unusual concept.
One of the few bastions of the performance-art world to hit some level of critical mass in the eyes of the general public, Blue Man Group – consisting of three guys in black bodysuits with blue skin who create music with any number of invented musical instruments (including lots of PVC plumbing pipe) – has only just recently issued this, their first recorded studio performance.