Crowded House - Classic Masters (2003)

By their very nature, compilations omit songs -- they're designed to distill an artist's body of work to ten or 12 songs, so it's only natural that critics and fans alike will complain about what tracks were left behind, particularly for a band like Crowded House, which had a limited number of charting hits, lots of released singles, and a passionate fan base that made album tracks seem like hits. Nevertheless, Crowded House's volume of Capitol's Classic Masters series gets it about as wrong as it possibly could. Yes, the 12-track collection has four of the big hits ("Don't Dream It's Over," "Weather With You," "Something So Strong," "It's Only Natural"), but the remaining eight songs are a weird mix of lesser-known singles, solid album tracks, and relative rarities -- a remix of "Distant Sun" and previously unreleased (at least in the U.S.) live versions of "When You Come" and "Sister Madly." This hodgepodge is particularly baffling when you consider what could (and should) have been on here: "World Where You Live," "Fall at Your Feet," "Locked Out," "Into Temptation," "Private Universe," "I Feel Possessed," "Four Seasons in One Day," "Mean to Me," and "Better Be Home Soon" were all on the previous hits collection Recurring Dream, and should have been here (any one of them would be better than "Chocolate Cake," at the very least). Even if it leaves off some genuine hits, that list of songs would have made for a better, more representative listen than this disc which, while listenable, is far from their classic work, and pales dramatically in comparison to Recurring Dream.