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11 Years on, Crowded House 2.0 in Sydney

By Nick Hodge | November 5, 2007

11 years after the Farewell to the World con­cert, Crowded House 2.0 reformed and has returned to Sydney.

In another 11 years time, all of Sydney would remem­ber that day in Novem­ber 1996 when the band played until Don’t Dream It’s Over. The entire 4+ mil­lion people will say they were there; just like Woodstock.

Start­ing with Neil Finn’s per­sonal favour­ite song, Private Uni­verse; a song where Matt Sher­rod can show his drum­ming metal — to the final Bet­ter Be Home Soon; the crowd swooned and sang along.

At times the con­cert was like a Neil Finn revival meet­ing for yup­pies. Whilst Crowded House wasn’t cool in the 1980s and early 1990s, they cer­tainly are now. High FM radio rota­tion songs such as Weather With You, Four Sea­sons in One Day and Don’t Dream It’s Over become hymns for all to sing along to. And the crowd cer­tainly joined The Crow­dies in the old clas­sics. It’s strange how you will sing along with 10,000 other people yet never do so in an office.

New songs, like all new Neil Finn songs, were let lose with album match­ing qual­ity. It is the band that recor­ded the ori­ginal songs; even with a hir­sute Liam Finn join­ing his dad for two songs. Two news songs: Pour Le Monde and Silent House res­on­ated most with the audience.

A little jour­ney into Kraftwerk-inspired disco spill­ing into Split Enz Spell­bound, and back again demon­strated the musi­cian­ship of the group. A bunch of blokes get­ting together and enter­tain­ing. Giv­ing a voice to those uncool enough to like the Crow­dies; but not hiphop.

1.0 will be remembered. And can never be replaced. We miss you Paul. Is it Crowded House sans Paul Hester? Yes, but 2.0

Topics: crowdedhouse | 7 Comments »

7 Responses to “11 Years on, Crowded House 2.0 in Sydney”

  1. Stewart Greenhill Says:
    November 7th, 2007 at 12:37 am

    I’ve got my tick­ets. Count­ing down the sleeps now until Fri­day Novem­ber 16 when Crowded House play at Supreme Court Gar­dens in Perth. Des­pite being a long-time fan, I’ve never seen them per­form in con­cert, though I have caught a couple of Finn Bros gigs, and the Split Enz tour.

    “Silent House” is one of my favour­ite tracks from “Time on Earth”. While attempt­ing to learn the song I did a bit of research and was sur­prised to find that it was co-written by Niel Finn and the Dixie Chicks. The Chicks’ ver­sion is a little up-beat for my lik­ing, but still good. I think the song res­on­ates because most of us can relate to that situ­ation of loss.

    One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about Neil Finn’s con­certs is that wild­card ele­ment, whether its some blast from the past or some unex­pec­ted cover. And since their stu­dio albums are highly pro­duced, live ver­sions of the songs can sound quite fresh and different.

  2. Nick Hodge Says:
    November 7th, 2007 at 2:57 pm

    Their shows in small ven­ues before they “went big” were clas­sics: audi­ence par­ti­cip­a­tion, and the whole thing.

    Pure mad­ness.

    Many great stor­ies. Many nights.

    Long live Crowded House 1.0

  3. Anne Says:
    November 8th, 2007 at 3:19 am

    Yes, I think you cap­tured that well. Crowded House 1.0, and Crowded House 2.0. I saw 2.0 in Brus­sels, and still cher­ish the happy memor­ies. I think it took two people to replace Paul Hester, but with Davey Lane there the magic is there.

  4. Oddvar Says:
    November 8th, 2007 at 11:24 am

    Nick, You’re hold­ing back a bit on the super­lat­ives. I saw CH v1.0 “way back when” and have been a big fan of them (and Split Enz as well as bothe Tim and Neil) since the begin­ning. The gig in SEC was as good as (if not bet­ter than) any­thing I’ve seen from any mem­ber of that exten­ded fam­ily. The only thing I can iam­gine would top this would be if I was still liv­ing in Bris­tol, UK, and could have seen their appear­ance at the “Thekla” (a club/boat moored in the Bris­tol float­ing har­bour). So keep look­ing for­ward to “your” dates for the rest of the tour. I can’t wait for their next album (they are head­ing back to stu­dio at the end of the year — Neil con­firmed it live).

  5. Nick Hodge Says:
    November 8th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

    Oddvar

    It’s a little dif­fi­cult to describe the feel­ing. There is a hole that the band is try­ing to fill; and the only pos­it­ive way of describ­ing this Crowded House is that it’s ver­sion 2.0.

    It helps me sum up the feel­ing I had with the old with-Paul Crowded House. The light­ness of touch. The light­ness in enter­tain­ment and the tight­ness of the threesome.

    Crowded House 2.0 is only a year in to find­ing their feet. There is no doubt that they have an invent­ory of songs that are in the hearts of music listeners.

  6. Stewart Greenhill Says:
    November 8th, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    Nick, part of that light­ness was that they had no obvi­ous “agenda”. They had the free­dom to be cre­at­ive, open, mis­chiev­ous, reflect­ive, irrev­er­ent, etc.

    With “Time on Earth” they are try­ing to recover from a ter­rible loss. Most of the songs are suf­fused with the events of Paul’s passing. The vibe is dif­fer­ent, but still very real.

    The lineup has changed and they will tighten up with time, but life moves on too. The chal­lenge for the audi­ence is to move with them. As we mature dif­fer­ent issues become import­ant, and these will come forth through the songs. Ten years on I would not expect the feel to be the same. I’ll cer­tainly be inter­ested to see the next album which will prob­ably be more rep­res­ent­at­ive of their future output.

  7. Stewart Greenhill Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    Nick, judging from the songs you men­tioned it looks like the Perth gig was quite dif­fer­ent. Check out my review and the set list here.

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