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When he comes on the line from the southwest of England, Neil Finn muses on the time difference. It's mid-evening in New Zealand but it's morning in the village a few kilometres outside Bath - "quintessential English countryside, beautiful old stone houses and the leaves turning as we are looking at them" - where he's now living.
He and wife Sharon shifted there earlier in the year to be nearer their sons - Liam, who has based his band betchadupa in London, and Elroy, who has been attending the prestigious Atlantic College in South Wales.
But the ostensible reason for the chat also comes with its own timewarp - the release of the DVD and CD of Crowded House's final show on the steps of the Sydney Opera House before an audience of 120,000 people in 1996.
"The idea to put it out on DVD came about a year ago because it hadn't been available and it seemed an obvious thing to do. We had a lot of other stuff like documentary footage that we knew would make a pretty good document of it and the 10-year anniversary was significant.
"It was slightly shocking to me that it was getting up to 10 years, but that's the way life goes. But it all added up to a compelling reason to put some work into it."
Titled Farewell to the World, it shows the band reunited with drummer Paul Hester, who had quit the previous year, effectively pulling the rug out from under the outfit he and Finn formed in the wake of Split Enz's demise a decade earlier.
With Hester's death last year, work on the DVD - listening to mixes, looking at the footage and doing a commentary track with bassist Nick Seymour and guitarist-keyboardist Mark Hart - was a poignant time for Finn.
"There is tremendous amount of emotion wrapped up in it for me. And I think about it a lot and I think about the guys and particularly with Paul last year it really hauled the whole thing it into close focus for me and I had to really consider it again."
Not that it caused him any regrets about breaking up the band when he did.
"We possibly would have been able to carry on with the name but at the time my instincts were pointing me in a direction and I stuck to it. I think the inevitability of it stops me regretting anything."
The trio's commentary track has its own comedy sideline - a running gag about Seymour's occasional, er, reinterpretation of how his parts went.
"Nick is a very idiosyncratic bass player and he had marvellous ideas and I think he and I play really well together - there is something about the combination that really works. But he has always been the clanger king.
"In any given show there are always two or three moments where he'll be on the wrong note and looking at me on stage saying 'What? What's wrong? You don't like this note?' and just refusing to acknowledge it. So it's just become bit of a running joke."
Finn's overriding memory of the night was that the band played really well - and for a long time.
"The hardcore fans have probably seen better shows in terms of the band messing around and getting loose and wild with it, but we were never really that inclined to see that show that way.
"We had to get through a hell of a lot of songs - I was shocked to see how many songs we played. I thought 'Poor people'."
But most of those who got anywhere near the stage on that night should remember seeing the band playing a blinder.
"We were a kick-ass [expletive] great live band on a good night. Not just because we put massive amounts of commitment and energy into it, but there was a rapport between us. You came along and got a lot more than just the songs."
* Crowded House - Farewell to the World is out now.
