For more than four decades, Crowded House leader Neil Finn has been on an evolving, winding journey. Crowded House’s mid-Eighties hits like “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Something So Strong,” combined with albums like Woodface and Together Alone, set the standard for the period’s erudite jangle-pop while always pushing the band’s art forward.

That creative spirit brings Finn and his Crowded House bandmates to Gravity Stairs, their first new release since 2021’s Dreamers Are Waiting and eighth overall. Produced by the band with Steven Schram, the album shows Crowded House in its current incarnation — Finn, Nick Seymour, Mitchell Froom, and Finn’s sons Elroy and Liam — as sharp as ever, feeling musically adventurous, and still capable of reaching the staggering highs that have made them an international favorite. It’s the act of climbing those figurative “gravity stairs,” inspired by a heavy stone staircase near where Finn vacations, that he likens to his own mindset as a creator.

“It’s a metaphor for getting a little older and becoming aware of your own mortality, your own physicality,” Finn says. “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.”