“I’m walking around the street in New York right now, wondering where I should go where there are no trucks,” Crowded House bassist Nick Seymour says apologetically. “Hopefully, I won’t lose you.”

The emphatically polite Seymour, and his mates, are in New York in support of their new album, the lyrical, atmospheric “Intriguer.” While it’s officially the New Zealand-based band’s sixth studio outing, it’s only the second with the current lineup — A decade after the band officially split up,  founders Seymour and lead singer/lyricist Neil Finn joined with former member and multi-instrumentalist Mark Hart and former Beck drummer Matt Sherrod for 2007′s “Time On Earth.”

The moody, somber set was dedicated to original Crowded House drummer Paul Hester, who committed suicide in 2005, and re-introduced the band, best known stateside for 1980s hits like “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Something So Strong,” but reknowned for their later work world-wide. As Crowded House prepares to meet their fans Tbursday night at The Filmore in Miami Beach, they’re both embracing their legacy of music and their future. Last week, as Seymour walked around Manhattan – successfully managing not to lose the call – we talked about the band’s reputation for positivity at a time when positivity wasn’t cool, the difficulties of fame and whether or not Crowded House has anything in common with Coldplay.

(Full disclosure: Crowded House has been my favorite band for more than 20 years, which enhanced my knowledge of the music and the interview, but which didn’t make me a blathering fangurl. I swear.)

Question: A review of your show in Buffalo said that fans of Coldplay should buy the new album, so they knew where the sound comes from. Do you hear that influence?

Answer: COLDPLAY? That’s ridiculous. I imagine that this music reviewer must have come to early adulthood during that time and has a very limited frame of referemce. I would say that there are influences (with Coldplay) by a lot of the same music that members of Crowded House cut their teeth on, but I think it has more to do with the very universality of melody and rhythm. But that’s where the comparison ends.

Q: Well, then!

A: Having said that…(pauses) I remember when I was producing an Irish band years ago called Bell X 1, and I went to a party in London with a mate of mine who was working for EMI. I said “I think I may have found EMI the next Crowded House,” because the band has split up by then, and he said ‘Most of the execs think they found the new Crowded House in Coldplay!”

Q: Now, that’s funny. This album, your second without Paul, seems a little melancholy but still lighter. There seems to be more of a hopefulness to it.

A: It could be. The “Time on Earth” album was a collection of songs that were written before we really put the band back together, except the last four songs. It was really a Neil solo album. I didn’r really know where I stood in that collaboration, but gradually it developed as we recorded that collection of songs. It was more introspective, more the musings of a solo artist. Neil had become used to doing that, putting records together as a solo artist. But this is much more of a combination of the four characters in the band, developed whilst we were touring on “Time on Earth.” We would do them in front of the audiences, and then developed them to the next level. We were afraid some fans might be disappointed (in the recorded versions) – I’ve read a couple of the blogs that people have bootlegs of the live versions and didn’t like the new versions compared to the way we played them live. You can hear the energy formed from Neil’s lyrics, that much more intense and represents the fact that we developed them as a four-piece.

You know, that show you menrioned in Buffalo was an absolute grinder. It was a small stage, an outdoor event. It was just extraordinary! It felt like we were playing to thousands, and there were just 1500 people there.

Q: So the album’s being received well live?

A: That’s always an issue for me, when we’re writing the set. Neil writes the set list every night, to be aware of the guitar changes and the link between the songs. He has a lot of changes from piano to guitar. So, he writes the set list and reviews it with me and Matt and Mark. We always look to see, but there’s a fairly even spread of the new (songs) with the old. We try to spread the set list across the six albums we have made. When we play a new song, we think the audience appreciates our reputation we’ve made with the people who’ve made the effort to see us live, based on the quality of the performance itself.

Q: Having seen you twice, I can tell you, it works.

A: Thank you. We try to make the event as musical as possible, even if it’s a song they’re not as familiar with. We don’t play all new songs, maybe four or five in a two-hour show. We hope they’ll still react to it, the way we’ve rendered the version of these songs, in a way that carries the entertainment factor through. There’s always a familiarity factor, like when they hear “Weather With You” or “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” We’ve played a couple of shows recently where we’ve done a couple of Split Enz songs (from Finn’s previous band) like “I Got You.” And when we do it, it goes down gangbusters. A lot of people are coming back who have seen us before, and they seem genuinely appreciative of the four of us.

Q: The debut Crowded House album was released in 1986, 24 years ago, and it’s clear that there have been some changes in the music, but “Intiguer” still sounds like a Crowded House album. Tell me about the musical thread that weaves through all of the albums.

A: I think there is a fairly even mix between the sentiment of singer/songwriters like Neil, where the lyric and the melody are a counterpoint to the music. That’s very universal and very pop. And then, it has such a deeper resonance when people connect with the lyrics and the singalong factor. We were reknowned for that in the UK, being one of the best singalong bands. At the Glastonbury Festival, we won Best Singalong Experience. That is your big factor – we tend to unify an audience with an uplifiting vibe. I guess it’s better than inciting fans to burn police cars or something. Singing along is possibly the best thing.

Q: I’m sure that gives you a leg up with festival bookers. I’m sure they’d rather have that! I can tell you, having been a fan of yours for so long, that there is that element not only of knowing all the words, but of being in this space with all of these other people who do, too, who love the music just as much as you do. When I saw you guys in Atlanta, at the Tabernacle in 2007, I wrote that I felt like the Bee Girl in that Blind Lemon video, who didn’t fit in with anyone but finally found all of the other bees just like her.

A: i’m familiar with that video, and I agree. I’ve stopped fighting that sense of collective consciousness. I often used to feel, back in the day, that it was going to be deemed quite uncool, back when indie rock was in its infancy. I recognize the wave of positive, unified feeling that comes from the audience, something that makes my life completely connected with the age I’m at. I’ll be 52 in December, and I’m happy to be aging gracefully.

Q: What about how the band has evolved?

A: I really feel that finding Matt created a new era of the Crowded House dynamic. We weren’t replacing Paul with Matt. But in doing so, we realized that we had to meet somenbody who had an instinctive chemistry with us, and that’s what we found with Matt…He plays quite differently from the way that Paul plays, or Paul played. It’s quite a different rhythm section – we weren’t going to go with a metal dummer or something, but we wanted to go with a well-rounded drummer with a keen sense of rhythm. And Matt is that guy. And he really, really is a lovely man, if I might say.

Q: You may! The first time I saw you was in 1987 at the Baltimore City Fair, and it was a crazy, long show that was the most fun I had ever had.

A: I think, actually, there is is less angst with us than there was back then. There is an assured confidence that we never had before, and that we didn’t know where we fit in, or if we were going to be able to do this. There was a lot of uncertainty.

Q: I never would have known!

A: We’d had a hit with “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” but the band was miserable and I never understood why. The song got to Number 2 (in the U.S.) and it all seemed incredibly hectic and confused, and Neil wasn’t happy. A lot of it came down to us not understanding whether we had people with us, around us, who understood us, and whether we understood each other. It’s amazing – the minute you taste success, you realize how completely confounding that wily little minx can be (laughs).

Q: So you’ve come a long way.

A: Now, we’re blessed with the fact that we can play pretty much in theaters or arenas where we’ve played before, in North America, Western Europe. New Zealand and Australia, and enjoy an incredible sense of connection with our existing fan base. They seem to have passed on that feeling and we’re being taken seriously on radio as well, and in the media. And there’s no longer a care, really, about whether we fit in, still. We’re blessed.