A 'Crowded House' for Charity

Neil Finn, singer for Split Enz and Crowded House, assembled the 7 Worlds Collide Project in 2001 for a live benefit recording. Eight years later, the group is back together for an official studio album, The Sun Came Out, and five finished track samples are available right now on MySpace.

The new lineup is, quite frankly, ridiculous. The band features Radiohead's Phil Selway and Ed O’Brien, Smiths and Modest Mouse guitarist Johnny Marr and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche and Pat Sansone, among others, while the special guest lineup includes KT Tunstall, Soul Coughing's Sebastian Steinberg and Lisa Germano. Selway, the stickman for Radiohead, even gets behind the mic in his recorded vocal debut ("The Tie That Binds Us" on MySpace). Several individuals also contributed to the songwriting, so now's your chance to hear what a Tweedy-Marr song ("Too Blue") would sound like. The Sun Came Out was recorded by Finn last Christmas in New Zealand.

The double-disc album, out Sept. 29 in the United States, will direct all proceeds to Oxfam International, a confederation of 13 nonprofit organizations committed to ending poverty, inequality and injustice around the world.

Crowded House photo courtesy of Kerry Brown.