Crowded House: 'You have to be optimistic. You can’t overindulge the morbid thoughts' 

Neil Finn on the Kiwi band's new album,  touring with Fleetwood Mac and why his two sons keep him looking on the bright side 

Crowded House hope to play three dates in Ireland next year. 

Neil Finn, New Zealand music’s jovial elder statesman, is remembering his best friend and bandmate Paul Hester. The 64-year-old recalls the Crowded House drummer holding Finn’s baby son Liam up to the heavens, recreating a scene from the 1970s TV show Roots; how Hester taught Liam’s younger brother, Elroy, to play the drums. But Hester’s gone now – he took his own life in 2005.

“Paul is a very constant presence in my life – I think about him all the time,” Finn says over Zoom from his home in Auckland, New Zealand. “A lot of the good memories and good associations with Paul resonate easily as much as the sadness of losing him.”