a birthday present from a band we know and love?

The Police, The Spice Girls, Smashing Pumpkins, Genesis, even Bone Thugs ’N’ Harmony, for heaven’s sake… unless you’ve been too busy doing yoga, showing gracious, undeserved love to labradoodles or running in muddy paddocks, you can’t fail to have noticed an apparent viral epidemic of bands reforming (for good or for ill: do we really need a Take That reunion?)

The days of Return of the Jedi screening in New Zealand months after US release (not bitter) are a long way behind us, and these days kiwis are at the forefront of any viral activity. So Crowded House and Supergroove have joined the reform club without delay.

Of course, with U2 and the Rolling Stones not shy of bringing their zimmer frames onstage, there’s plenty of encouragement for old codgers to break out the leather pants and look wistfully at the moshpit while calculating the chiropractic fee that would follow any unwise leaping. And Crowded House, not being peopled (or chickened?) by spring chickens when they formed, have had no shame in including in the new line up Neil Finn’s son, Liam, on guitar.

The first compact disc I ever bought, to play on my brand new shiny black ghetto blaster (thank you Post Office savings book), was Crowded House’s Woodface, and since then I’ve amassed quite a collection of their music, stopping just short of officially joining their fanclub (apparently I think that it’s that step that would define me as a true geek). I’ve been to a bunch of Crowded House/Finn gigs, including the legendary Seven Worlds Collide event where some of Neil’s mates dropped in to jam with him (you know, Eddie Vedder, Johnny Marr, half of Radiohead, just some chums). As a certain birthday lad will attest, there’s a Finn gene for putting on brilliant shows.

So I was sad when they broke up; I was cautious in approaching their reformation disc, Time on Earth. Then I heard the first single, which seemed disappointingly ordinary to me, especially since Neil Finn has written some damn fine music in his time of going solo over the last few years. And I became both cautious and sceptical.

When finally, almost against my better judgment, I bought the new cd, I was crestfallen at hearing the first two tracks, which are the singles. Superior bland pop, but bland pop nevertheless.

But then it got markedly better, and it got like a good reformation should be: a nicely balanced combination of picking up where they left off, and starting up again, having absorbed the last eight years of pop, rock, and electronica. It was exactly like I’d gone away for eight years, come back and heard what Crowded House had been up to while I was away. So I think Nick would like this disc too – we’ve often talked about the dilemma of wanting your favourite acts to just keep going, putting out more of the music you love, at the risk of sameyness and wanting to hear something new, at the risk of not liking it.

Time on Earth has spiky, jangly piano bits whose genealogy stretches right back to Split Enz (and yep, Eddie Rayner’s credited on the album), the characteristic melting harmonies so lush you can’t tell how many vocal lines there are, but then also some subtly cunning looped samples (my fave is of a German airport announcement), and they all go together swimmingly. These guys were exploring ancient analogue keyboards before they were ancient, and even the young fullas discovering them lately can’t beat their use on this album.

I’m not going to be rushing out for the Spice Girls reunion tour tickets, but the Crowded House reformation seems to have gone smoothly. Old codgers with the wordsmith ability of Neil Finn are always welcome on my ghetto blaster. And Nick, I think you’d approve of the new album. Consider it Neil and the boys wishing you a Happy Birthday.