Neil Finn and Crowded House turned on plenty of the seat-of-the-pants spontaneity that marked the band in its heyday. Photo / Natalie Slade
The dream is far from over as Crowded House enthrals loyal fans with old favourites and their latest album tracks.
Crowded House, the version 2.0 of Neil Finn's band about to release the second album of their post-reunion incarnation, finally emerged from the studio to christen their forthcoming campaign with a hometown show.
But this wasn't just a cosy knees-up for the faithful, though there were inevitable outbreaks of community
singing to some old hits.
No, this was bit of extravaganza, a sort of Cirque du House.
It came complete with an MC in the form of Oscar Kightley and strange figures darting about the stage, who weren't there to tune guitars.
It was bathed by a light show so dazzling - as well as featuring in a couple of songs the town hall organ took on a visual life of its own care of beautifully warped digital projections - the band sometimes became secondary.
And it also came with an audience sporting supplied cardboard teddy bear masks. That was something to do with the album artwork, apparently. No doubt it will make sense on the DVD.
And there were stage guests who ranged from Latin ballroom dancers on the bossa nova Either Side of the World to - patriotic or what? - 10 guitars and their young owners.
Yes, 10 guys took to the choir stalls to add some extra layers to the churning Chills-ish chords to new track Inside Out in what proved to be one of the night's madder rock'n'roll moments.
As Finn said at the end, this was a night that might have craved the audience's indulgence, with almost all of new album Intriguer making up the 20 or so song set. It was also big on psychedelic excursions of familiar material and the sort of seat-of-the-pants spontaneity that marked the band in its heyday.
That included a synthesizer-powered dance jam which, as Finn quipped, was in the Crowded House tradition of doing something off-the-cuff, only to find it undermined the drama of the next song.
And the likes of Private Universe, already a fairly celestial number in previous incarnations, reached one of its highest orbits yet.
While Finn, bassist Nick Seymour and guitarist-keyboardist Mark Hart were all in fine form, the performance reminded us why it was a wise decision to recruit former Beck drummer Matt Sherrod. Just as high science can start to resemble art, his fluid percussion had something curiously melodic about it.
The band might have strayed outside the casual fan's comfort zone, but there was still plenty of hardy perennials in the mix, including an encore of Don't Dream It's Over given a slight funereal feel with its full-bodied pipe organ solo.
It all made for a colourful, unpredictable and memorable night. One that suggested that while Finn's trusty old vehicle has a few miles on the clock, it's sounding all tuned up and raring to explore both some old highways and some new territory off the beaten path.
