Crowded House: Intriguer

Intriguer is a curious hybrid: at once, Crowded House's sixth album since Neil Finn formed the band 25 years ago, and their second since reforming, following the suicide of fellow founder member Paul Hester in 2005. You can sense its double identity as you listen: there are songs that bristle with ambition, with strange undercurrents and scuffed melodies; and then there are songs that plod amiably along, as comfortable as a fraying pair of slippers. No prizes for guessing which camp the anaesthetised 1950s doo-wop meets late-1960s psychedelia of Isolation is in, or opening track Saturday Sun, with its squalling electronics buzzing beneath vigorous guitars, making it unexpectedly reminiscent of Sonic Youth's The Eternal. The trouble with the album's more conventionally crafted pop songs is that they invariably sound dull. Not that that will trouble fans who have been around since early hit Don't Dream It's Over: to them, the gently shuffling Twice if You're Lucky will be perfection itself.