Gig review: Crowded House at the Piece Hall, Halifax

“It’s good to see you all in this beautiful place on this gorgeous evening,” Neil Finn says early on to a bustling Piece Hall courtyard beneath cloudless blue skies. “It doesn’t come easy around here. But I like to think we do in fact bring the weather to you.”

Few Australasian bands have cracked the British market like Crowded House did at the peak of their powers; fewer still have enjoyed the longevity they have maintained within the national public consciousness. It’s a testament to their appeal that they can still pull comfortable crowds out on a sunny Wednesday night to an old textile town with their wistful melancholy and fettered hooks.

With a fast-approaching fortieth anniversary lurking just around the corner, it is a firm and fun family affair once again for the Trans-Tasman rock veterans. Only Finn and bassist Mark Seymour remain from the group that formed in Melbourne back in 1985; the former’s younger brother and Split Enz bandmate Tim has long since been and gone, while drummer Paul Hester tragically passed away in 2005.

In their place, Finn’s sons Liam and Elroy compliment their father as the rhythm section; longtime associate Mitchell Froom is now permanently fixed on keyboards.

Their second album in this configuration, Gravity Stairs, bowed inside the top ten of the British album charts last month. Preoccupied with the march of mortality, songs like Teenage Summer, with their skipped-swoon melodies, fit right into Finn’s oeuvre as one of his generation’s most astute chroniclers of jangle-pop life and love; with his greying barnet tousled around the frame of his face, he looks every inch the elder statesmen following his brief spell in Fleetwood Mac.

But nestled around the half-dozen tracks sketched underneath the gradual indigo hues of a Calderdale evening, there’s enough love spread across a back catalogue of wonderful gems. Fall at Your Feet has an early outing, replete with a gorgeous acapella coda; Private Universe gets a psychedelica workover midway through; Four Seasons in One Day unfurls such superb harmonies, it practically elevates to another plane of existence.

By the time Distant Sun, Don’t Dream It’s Over and – yes – Weather with You have been sprung at the end of the main set, the blissed-out summer languorousness at hand is too relaxed to resist. “You’ve been wonderful”, Finn says before the climax of Better Be Home Soon. He has been too.