Crowded House... consumate professionals, and charming too (Hammersmith Apollo, June 9th 2010)

What always strikes you about Crowded House is their relaxed, hilarious interaction with their audience. After two and a half odd decades their antipodean sense of humour is undiminished and was in evidence at the Apollo - awarding an impromptu prize to an exceedingly particularly enthusiastic fan near the fan, or after a momentary mental twitch that caused Neil Finn to think of Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing" -- diving headlong into full scale, improvised rendition of the real thing, or Seymour's stream of consciousness rant about cats having sex outside his window at night.

Their set was a mix across the full catalogue, with a heavy weighting to the as yet unreleased album Intruiguer. The new tracks sounded much like recent Crowded House output - consistent, accessible... slightly lacking that really unique wit and sparkle of their very best work, but still great songwriting and worth investing the time.

Early hits Don't Dream It's Over, Something So Strong, and World Where You Live were all given a small twist with a particularly plangent 80's synth backing, the latter being my personal highlight for the evening.

Also impressive were the Together Alone tracks - Distant Sun, Private Universe, Fingers of Love... this is inarguably their best work - deeply evocative and soulful. Inspired equally by the Finn's Irish heritage, and by the native tradition of the south pacific islands, the whole album has a timeless spirit that strongly evokes the New Zealand geography and always makes me quite homesick.

Mark Hart - adds the spice to the group - lead guitar, slide, keyboards ... He does backing vocals too and this is the one place where he can't quite cut it - Tim Finn's voice is just so good and meshes so well with Neil's, the songs always sound best when he's there too. New drummer Matt Sherrod struck me as perfectly complementary, but a little less liberated with the music than Hester used to be. Hester knew not just the music, but was the closest of friends with the writers too, and was a great drummer to boot... he was freer to propel the music along rather than sitting within it. Still it works.

set list - http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/crowded-house/2010/hmv-hammersmith-apollo-london-england-4bd42ffa.html