Crowded House review – raucous spun-sugar pop perfection

Shepherds Bush Empire, London
With his sons rocking solos and a bonkers cameo from Mick Fleetwood, Neil Finn’s band spreads harmonic happiness

Sometimes all pop music needs to do is spread a little happiness. Playing a small London show to mark the release of their eighth album, Gravity Stairs, Crowded House do rather more than that. There’s comedy, with Neil Finn teasing bassist Nick Seymour – the only other constant member of the band – about his strapped knee, which leads through a summation of Seymour family history into the crowd singing Where Is Love? from Oliver! to the stage. There’s the beauty of the interlocking guitars and harmonies; on the lightly psychedelic All That I Can Ever Own the band are as perfectly woven as spun sugar.

And there is something laugh-out-loud bonkers, in the form of Mick Fleetwood taking the drum stool when Finn digs back into his past during the encores to revisit I Got You by Split Enz. Fleetwood eschews the metronomic unfussiness of the recorded version, and plays it like Keith Moon, inserting fills where neither space nor time suggest they should be. It’s raucous, ridiculous and absolutely wonderful. Obviously it ends with Fleetwood thrashing round the kit and leading the band in a huge rock climax.