3.6 - A lot gets said about hair metal bands being utterly decimated by Nirvana and the advent of grunge music. I think high energy adult contemporary bands of the 1980s, like Crowded House, that managed to hang on into the early 90s suffered from this "changing of the guard." Consider other similar bands: INXS, Tears For Fears, Simply Red, Simple Minds. Around 1990-1992, most/all of them were arguably past their hit-making primes but still releasing chart-worthy singles. "Woodface" feels distinctly like an album of that era, released just before the American grunge zeitgeist that would expunge these adult contemporary bands from my personal radar and make them culturally irrelevant. Sure, Crowded House went on to release other reasonably successful records but none would have any impact on me, an American teenager at the time. Now having that era in the rearview, it's easier to evaluate this relic on its own musical terms, and I actually like it. The songs are catchy and arranged really nicely. But as I'm listening, I'm reminded of that scene from "Titanic" in which the string ensemble plays in proud defiance as the ship sinks irretrievably into the black Atlantic.