Hey fannn, that's a great idea. Is anyone listening out there?
OK, as promised, here are the two reviews from newspapers De Morgen and De Standaard. Glowing they are, glowing ... Disregard any imperfections in my translation pls.
De Morgen – 19/10/07: Crowded House relives moments of glory
Crowded House presented a marathon-performance with lots of hits in Vorst Nationaal
You never know with come-backs and reunions of golden oldies. Is it a case of “let’s grab some cash before we retire” or is it an honest attempt to make a musical difference?
As far as this question is concerned, you could say that Crowded House’s is one of the best reunions in recent years. Their CD Time on Earth is a fun pop album with some exceptional songs and the show in Vorst Nationaal was pretty impressive.
During this marathon-gig of over two and a half hours, Crowded House pulled out all stops in order to make this a swinging AND emotional show. But Belgians will be Belgians of course, so Neil Finn had to tell the respectful audience that it was really quite alright to get up. From then on the chemistry really worked it’s magic. A sea of people gathered in front of the stage, Finn took off his jacket and songs like “Into Temptation” or “Don’t Dream it’s Over” did the rest during the one and a half hour that followed.
Crowded House was at its pinnacle in the 1980ies and that was clearly demonstrated by the fact that there were hardly any music lovers present who were younger than 30: only real fans who belted along the old hits word for word. And Neil Finn gave them what they wanted and often left the work to the crowd: it was spine tingling.
Also noticeable was how well Finn and bass player Nick Seymour were getting along. This used to be different. The renewed enthusiasm yielded some great moments, like when Finn improvised a gospel mass with the audience playing the role of choir.
Matt Sherod, replacing Paul Hester who committed suicide in 2005, delivered a strong performance. His pleasantly varied and (sometimes a bit too) strong drumming, sometimes turned ‘pop’ into ‘rock’.
Crowded House effortlessly convinced us of their earnest come-back and underlined this with a head-butt of a show.
The only minus was that the gentlemen of Crowded House overstayed their welcome a little: two encores of four songs each, if you please – but who can blame them? They had to restrain themselves for so long.
***********
De Standaard – 19/10/07: Crowded House plays best reunion gig of the year.
There’s life again in the House!
It was an emotional moment when Crowded House stepped onto the stage of Vorst Nationaal on Friday night. Eleven years after the split and two years after the suicide of drummer Paul Hester, the New-Zealand band received a heart-warming welcome.
A band that has the luxury of starting a show with two of its best songs, closing the set with an hour of encores and casually throwing in ten or more classics in between, can’t go very wrong. Indeed, Crowded House effortlessly fulfilled all expectations, profiled itself as the missing link between the Beatles and Coldplay and had – as usual – a couple of jokes up its sleeve to lift the sometimes melancholy mood.
Nevertheless it took the band a few moments to grapple with the acoustics of Vorst Nationaal, so that Private Universe and FSIOD didn’t sound their best. [Sweenie: Cherry Ghost struggled even more with the acoustics and sounded terribly fuzzy – they were good though!]. However, by the time In My Command came along, they’d nailed it and you heard a band that played with the drive of a bunch of young punks, all wailing guitars and exploding drums. It was a sit-down concert, and that was no picnic in a room where the chairs at the front didn’t even offer the arm-and-leg-room of a Ryanair flight. Just as well that Neil Finn soon told fans to ignore the security and get up. That was the pivotal moment that promptly and completely destroyed the last remainder of the barrier between audience and band.
The set – almost entirely consisting of greatest hits, interspersed with material from the new come-back album Time on Earth – was a wet dream for any Crowded House fan, and the requests that were shouted out from the audience, Better Be Home Soon, Mean To Me, were tasteful additions. DDIO brought a lump to many throats and WWY was belted along with gusto.
OK, you could argue that the show rattled a little in places because of the improvisations, but that would be ignoring the spontaneity of the band, and – even more importantly – the magic of the moment. Bass player Nick Seymour and multi-instrumentalist Mark Hart were grinning like Cheshire cats, new drummer Matt Sherrod rolled his sticks as if he used to work on the Muppet Show, and Finn himself sang perfectly. And every single one of them stood with visible pleasure in the spot where they should have been standing long ago: on the stage and close together. In a nutshell: the best reunion gig of the year.
