He is the one to make me cry

Have you listened to the new Crowded House record yet? If not....do.

Of course, the title of this post is a play on words of track #13, which might be the best song I've heard in...well, in a long, long time. Not too many musicians get to me like Neil Finn. He draws the slow sighs from me.

I think of Neil Finn as one of those miracle musicians. The kind that seem easy to dismiss at first, but once your mind and ears have settled in, you discover yourself having an ohmygod moment. There are a couple of songs off this new record that are giving me those, and part of me lives to experience them. They're damn rare. When I was driving home through the thick, rare Georgia snowfall a few weeks ago, track #8 began to play....as ethereal, light and, for me, as full of wonderment as the snow. The odd chords swirled about me as the wind blew the snow around my car, and I was moving as certainly through the music as I was the snowfall. I could have stayed suspended in that moment forever.

This is the magic that Neil Finn gives. As long as he's around, putting out songs like this, I know there's hope for music, after all. Finn's voice, so immediately identifiable, is in fine form throughout the record, sometimes full, sometimes raspy - and always on target with his strange melancholy chords that still manage to lift the listener.

Ah, Neil. Sing to me, baby!