32 Songs - Track 6

Into Temptation - Crowded House

Into temptation
Knowing full well the earth will rebel
Into temptation
Safe in the wide open arms of hell

Crowded House was introduced to me by Milos. He has also given me the joy of The Clash, The B-52s, Pink Floyd, The Cure, Men at Work and more recently Buck 65. I was very young and visiting him with my family when he put Crowded House's eponymus debut album on the record player one night. I quickly became obsessed by it, furiously trying to commit to memory all the lyrics before my family had to return to Canberra. Milos kindly dubbed the album to tape for me so i could take a copy away. Now, many years later, I own the first two albums on three different media, the rest on CD and a smattering of bootlegs on worn out cassettes. It seems that most people have a band that they become obsessed with at some point in their lives. For me it was the Crowdies.

In my humble, but always correct, opinion Neil Finn is one of the greatest writers the world will ever know. He should be up there with Shakespeare, Milton, Dylan, Melville, Hemingway, Austin, Dickens, Gaiman, Shelly, Plato, Keats, etc and lauded as one of the great master artists who uses words as a medium. However he is cruelly ignored because to the majority of the western world he just writes pop songs, which he does do, but the stories within should transcend their style of presentation to be hailed as the masterpieces of literature they obviously are. Now these could quite possibly be the demented rantings of an obsessed fan. But i am not the only person who thinks highly of the man. Let me give you an example. A couple of years ago Neil played some gigs in his home country of New Zealand and needed a backing band so he asked around. He got Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway (Radiohead), Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), Johnny Marr (The Smiths) and Lisa Germano. 'nuff said.

But onto the song. Into Temptation. Bloody brilliant. So good I haven't listened to more than the first five seconds in over ten years.

"Huh?" I sense you thinking.

Let me explain.

Into Temptation is the partner to Where is my Mind. Where The Pixies gave me relief through a song that allowed me to release my emotions Neil wrote a song so good and so illustrative of a few months in my life that to listen to it brings it all flooding back in one unbearable mass. And I just can't do it any more. It is a song about an offer to good to ignore and the repercussions of acceptance. The words say it all.

Into Temptation - A beautiful song that reminds me of nothing but ugliness.