Saturday, December 08, 2007
Crowded House - Brighton Centre
Pale denim, chinos and practical fleeces abounded in the Brighton Centre on Friday night. The usual fiver-flapping, dog-eat-dog scrum at the bar was replaced by a sedate shuffle more akin to a country pub than a gig and once inside the arena, the most powerful stimulant you were likely to find yourself caught downwind of was an extra-strength Strepsil.
But you wouldn’t go to see Crowded House expecting sweat soaked walls and a life changing rock n roll experience. You’d go to hear some of the most beautifully crafted guitar pop of the last century, delivered by way of some faultless musicianship and lashings of on stage bonhomie. In this regard, Crowded House absolutely did not disappoint.
The subtle shifts in tone and ambiance that characterise the songs of Neil Finn so effortlessly evoke the complexities of modern love that even a soulless hangar like Brighton Centre soon enough feels warm and intimate like a cosy living room when commandeered by The 'House. Powerless to resist, a third of the way through, large sections of the audience trapped up in the stalls flooded down to the front not only to get closer to the band, but, you sensed, to get a little closer to each other too. And from there on in it was plain sailing for the reformed New Zealand 4 piece.
Initally Finn’s voice sounded a shade more weather-beaten than you might remember. And though this seemed to suit the lived-in feel of much of the older material, come the latter half of the set, it was virtually flawless with Finn wringing every workable nuance and subtle vocal flourish from songs he must have been singing for some 25 years now. The band went the distance with a six song encore, soliciting requests for obscurities from their back catalogue as they went, and by their curtain call even the most hardened of cynics (i.e. me) couldn’t deny the warm fuzzy feeling the band had left us all with.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 11:03 PM
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