Crowded House has announced a new studio album titled Gravity Stairs, set to be released on May 31 via BMG. This reveal follows the band’s surprise single “Oh Hi,” which arrived last week as the band’s first new offering since its 2021 album Dreamers Are Waiting. The legendary new wave outfit’s latest dispatch suits the preview single to a new music video and discloses the full tracklist for its upcoming project.
Gravity Stairs is Crowded House’s eighth studio album, and the second with the band’s present lineup. Since its 2020 reformation, the group has consisted of frontman Neil Finn and bassist Nick Seymour, both founding members, alongside longtime session keyboardist Mitchell Froom and Liam and Elroy Finn, sons of Neil and multiinstrumentalists who have toured with the band since 2007 and 2008, respectively. The forthcoming project is produced by the band and Steven Schram, who has recently worked on albums from Powderfinger, The Waifs and Mildlife.
The album derives its name from a distinctive heavy stone staircase near where the elder Finn vacations, which the songwriter likens to his creative process and drive. “It’s a metaphor for getting a little older and becoming aware of your own mortality, your own physicality,” Finn reflects, after just shy of four decades with the band. “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.”
“Oh Hi” is just the sort of bubbly, uplifting cut that can inspire this sort of climb, as it muses on spontaneous glimpses of clarity and light that can transform one’s perspective. The song finds its roots in Finn’s work with So They Can, a nonprofit organization committed to building schools in remote parts of Kenya and Tanzania. “I’m hoping the song comes across without needing to know the backstory,” Finn says, “but it’s very much inspired by these incredible kids and their magnificence.” The new music video fixes a clipping of Finn’s talking head to a child running, playing, and dancing across an urban backdrop, steering hard into a sense of unencumbered joy and wonder.
Gravity Stairs is available to pre-order and pre-save now. Watch the “Oh Hi” music video below and read on for the album’s full tracklist. For more information, visit crowdedhouse.com.
Gravity Stairs Tracklist:
1. Magic Piano
2. Life’s Imitation
3. The Howl
4. All That I Can Ever Own
5. Oh Hi
6. Some Greater Plan (for Claire)
7. Black Water, White Circle
8. Blurry Grass
9. I Can’t Keep Up With You
10. Thirsty
11. Night Song
