Time on Earth

It began as Neil Finn's third solo album. After Hester's death and the preparations for the live album Farewell to the World, the members drew together again, and in 2006 Finn asked Seymour to take part in the recording and a tour. After a complete album with Ethan Johns as producer and drummer, Finn decided that Crowded House would reform and this would be their fifth studio album. Matt Sherrod and Mark Hart then joined, and Steve Lillywhite produced four further tracks. The central line-up of Finn, Seymour, Hart and Sherrod plays on only four songs, among them the singles Don't Stop Now and She Called Up. The title comes from a song that did not make the record.

Johnny Marr plays on Don't Stop Now and on Even a Child, which he wrote with Finn. Silent House was written with the Dixie Chicks. Pour le monde was prompted by a chant at an anti-war march in Paris, and Transit Lounge is about the airport lounges of Singapore and Bangkok. Finn has said that the opening of People Are Like Suns borrows from Ian McEwan's novel Saturday.

Seymour's cover shows a blue dragon eating a human, drawn from a sea serpent in Olaus Magnus's History of the Northern Peoples, to stand for Hester being consumed by depression. The album came out on 30 June 2007 in Australia, 2 July in Britain and 10 July in North America. It entered the British chart at number three, the band's highest placing there for a studio album, and went platinum in Australia and gold in New Zealand. Liam Gowing of the A.V. Club wrote that Hester's passing seems to color every line.