Crowded House at Limerick's King John’s Castle - A Review

“I’m back in my ancestral home,” announced Neil Finn, with the danger of becoming a Paddy’s Day parody, just in a different accent.

But then he quickly followed up by speculating that King John must have been an arsehole because people who built castles generally were. An audible sigh of relief came from a crowd that accepted Finn might not have known his mother’s Eircode, but he at least had her sense of humour.

Much of the build-up to this gig focused on the Kilmallock link so the fact a technically distant son of Limerick opened his night’s work with, well, ‘Distant Sun’ wasn’t lost on too many and we were up and running.

You can find highlights in any set if you want to. I quite liked the array of mixing in new stuff with their old classics, because while they’re not out here pushing albums or trying to perfect every downstroke like Alex Turner for two marathon hours, they’re still very much not a tribute act to themselves from 20 years ago.

And as much as the few thousand in attendance might have preferred a sing-song akin to their third-favourite uncle’s wedding to his second wife, Crowded House were there with purpose.

Their most recent release ‘Dreamers Are Waiting’ got a fair bit of attention and ‘Playing With Fire’, the third single from that album featured a gorgeous harmony that really tied Neil, Liam and Nick Seymour’s voices together.

As far as the practicalities go – I was in Marlay Park on Monday night for Green Day and the acoustics in King John’s Castle were at least twice as good, so whatever about anything else, we have a venue worthy of the music its hosting.

Of course getting bands to play a venue with that capacity is a treacherous enough middle ground to navigate. The Australian/Kiwi mashup are probably just about right in terms of grandeur but they will inevitably attract an awkward demographic.

Made up primarily of a combination of day-trippers who would buy anything Mick Dolan sold us (myself included) and a sprinkling of die-hard international fans who were undoubtedly sampling Chicken Hut and what else the city has to offer at time of writing, it had the chance to get awkward.

There were moments where Finn had to spring a flat enough crowd into life, removing them from the subconscious countdown to ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ by having a back and forth with the people atop St. Mary’s Cathedral or through forced clap beats in the middle-eights.

But it never quite seeped into disinterest and that largely came from the fact that you could see the main act were actually enjoying what they were doing. When you land in your sixties, there’s a real sense of a band unifying to appreciate the limited time they’ve left on stage together and the ever-popular Seymour on bass in particular seemed to embrace every moment.

That manifests respect.

So does a father pointing out that he has inherited two musically-gifted children in the shape his drummer (Elroy) and rhythm guitarist (Liam). For all that the Limerick link might have been pushed, the family connection on-stage was enough to connect to any audience.

Liam himself actually opened for Crowded House in a fifteen-minute spell that really displayed his on-stage persona quite well. Ironically, now thirty-eight, he probably represented the audience’s demographic expertly.

One thing that stood out to me was just how different their set was from the previous night in Cork, too. They’re not here to rest on their laurels with set-pieces – Crowded House, despite being nearly four decades removed from their origins in Melbourne – are comfortable shaking things up simply because of their familiarity with their back catalogue.

That’s rarer than it should be.

But as much as we like to stare, eyes-wide, at the excess of Ed Sheeran’s stage and pyro displays that deliver short-term memories to our children in exchange for half a month’s rent, it’s easy to forget that dear Edward hopped over from his cosy home in Suffolk.

Crowded House genuinely travelled about as far as you possibly can to get here, and that’s worth savouring as a city with such rich musical tradition was overlooked by global acts for far too long.

Is the castle’s history going to be rewritten now with the 120-minute Crowded House performance being deemed more epic than that of the sieges its had to endure? Not quite.

But after the two years of pencilling in and rubbing out rescheduled dates to get them here, the Mullane tribe produced something that we’ve been severely lacking over the last two years – and that’s a reason to go home smiling.

Set List from Limerick concert 2022

Distant SunWorld Where You LiveTo the Island
Fall at Your Feet
Pineapple Head
Playing With Fire
Start of Something
Whispers and Moans
When You Come
Private Universe
Four Seasons in One Day
Sister Madly
(with “Aquarius” by The Fifth Dimension)
Whatever You Want
Mean to Me
Don't Dream It's Over
It's Only Natural

Encore:
Weather With You
Something So Strong
Not the Girl You Think You Are
Better Be Home Soon