Crowded house have announced their eighth studio album, Gravity Stairs.
Arriving this May, Gravity Stairs takes its name from a heavy stone staircase near where Neil Finn vacations, that he likens to his mindset as a creator.
“It’s a metaphor for getting a little older and becoming aware of your own mortality, your own physicality,” Finn explains. “Things are getting a little harder, and there’s more determination needed to get to the top, but there’s still the same compulsion to climb them.”
Crowded House’s upcoming album is led by new single, “Oh Hi”, which they shared earlier this month. “Oh Hi”, the band’s first original music in two years, was influenced by band leader Neil Finn‘s support for So They Can, an international nonprofit focused on building schools in remote parts of Kenya and Tanzania.
“I’m hoping the song comes across without needing to know the backstory,” Finn said in a statement. “But it’s very much inspired by these incredible kids and their magnificence.”
Alongside Crowded House’s album announcement comes an official music video for the previously released “Oh Hi”, which you can watch below.
Crowded House last dropped new music in 2021 with studio LP Dreamers Are Waiting. The group was previously on pause, with Finn joining Fleetwood Mac in 2018. But the musician decided to bring back Crowded House in 2021 with his sons Liam and Elroy as official members.
“We don’t want to be that same band now,” Finn told Rolling Stone. “I like to think the songs can be equally as good. Some people will find them not as immediately catchy or classic-sounding, but it’s worth remembering that when we handed our first record into Capitol, nobody was saying it was going to go straight onto the radio. They were like, ‘I don’t know if you have the singles.’ Sometimes hits and popular songs aren’t obvious until they happen.”
Crowded House’s Gravity Stairs is out May 31st via BMG (pre-save/pre-order here).
