POP/ROCK
Crowded House, "Intriguer" (Fantasy)
The "Don't Dream It's Over" band peaked in the United States in 1987 but continued for a decade before disbanding. After the death of drummer Paul Hester in 2006, New Zealander frontman Neil Finn and Aussie bassist Nick Seymour resurrected Crowded House, bringing aboard a pair of Americans for 2007's "Time on Earth."
Finn is an articulate songwriter, and for the most part the arrangements on "Intriguer" are invitingly lush and genteel.
Emerging from the gauzy strains of music, the vocalist plays bitter, resigned and bucolic. Nuances are sprinkled throughout the mix: Lisa Germano's violin; narcotic vocals by Finn's wife, Sharon, on "Isolation"; fuzzed-out guitars on "Even If." But frontman Finn doesn't change much with the shifts in sound, which puts him at odds with the rawer stretches of instrumentation. Plus his delivery sometimes makes it hard to infer emotional context.
Crowded House performs Sept. 4 at the Minnesota Zoo.
CHUCK CAMPBELL, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
Los Lobos, "Tin Can Trust" (Shout Factory)
It's easy to get seduced by the relaxed bluesy shading of "Tin Can Trust," but that doesn't mean that there aren't some jolts. There's plenty of scruff here. The 11 tracks are all carefully decorated, be it the vintage guitar strut of "On Main Street" or the sparse atmospheres of "27 Spanishes," where the hand drums, rhythmic clanks and jagged guitars reverberate as if they were laid down in an alley.
