Can it really be more than three years since Crowded House played their final gig on the steps of the Sydney Opera House? Never really flavour of the month in the UK, where they were only intermittently adored by the record-buying public, Crowded House were one of the great song bands of the 1990s, thanks largely to principal writer Neil Finn's extraordinary grasp of melody.

1996's million-selling Recurring Dream, The Best Of collection summarised the group's commercial and artistic peaks. Now this compilation of songs that failed to make the cut of individual albums, together with stage favourites, B-sides and demos, serves as a reminder of their strengths and weaknesses.

Nearly half the songs here were originally slated for '92's Woodface or its follow-up, '93's Together Alone, and while their exclusion is a testament to the strength of those collections, the first six cuts here are as strong as anything on those records - albeit a trifle more personal. Thus the opening I Am In Love is archetypal Neil Finn, complete with anthemic chorus and Beatle-sque middle eighth, but is a good deal more emotionally direct than most of the band's songs. The same can also be said of I Love You Dawn, a toe-tapping ditty that Finn wrote for his wife in the build-up to Woodface. Inevitably, there's also some throwaway numbers: step forward drummer Paul Hester's My Telly's Gone Bung, while the acoustic version of Private Universe doesn't match the grandeur of the original.

In fact, this collection is a reminder that Crowded House were more than the sum of their parts. Certainly, it's Finn's songs that stick in the memory, but it was the playing and arrangements that enabled those songs to soar. Check out two new, yet classic additions to the band's canon: the sulky, accusatory Sacred Cow and one of the last songs the band ever recorded, Help Is Coming, full of dreamy guitar and swooning harmonies. Whistling these will prove no problem: further proof that the reason Crowded House were never flavour of the month is that they were built to last.

Track List:
01. I Am In Love
02. Sacred Cow
03. You Can Touch
04. Help Is Coming
05. I Love You Dawn
06. Dr. Livingstone
07. My Telly's Gone Bung
08. Private Universe
09. Lester
10. Anyone Can Tell
11. Recurring Dream
12. Left Hand
13. Time Immemorial