REVIEW: The sound of Te Awamutu had a truly sacred ring at Christchurch Arena on Wednesday night. In their first visit to the region since February 2011, Crowded House made the Garden City the epicentre of the musical universe, as it hosted “the biggest gig in the world right now”. The South Island’s largest city wasn’t supposed to host the first outing for the retooled, triple-Finned beloved band (that honour was supposed to fall to Hamilton), but events up north in the last couple of weeks resulted in a rejig that co-founder and leader singer Neil Finn described as “fitting and fair” to a city where so much has happened in the past decade.
Mountain Scene
By GUY WILLIAMS
Nick Seymour feels like he’s just come out of rehab.
Although he’s never actually been in rehab, that’s how Crowded House’s bass guitarist feels about his fortnight’s spell in quarantine last month.
Fresh off the plane from Ireland, where he’s spent the best part of the last year ‘‘cosily ensconced in my West Coast hideaway’’ with his partner and two kids, it occurred to him that for the first time in his life, he’d be deprived of human contact and some of the luxuries a successful musician can afford to surround himself with.