UK Crowded House fans needn’t dream it’s over for the band’s highly-anticipated British and European tour, with an announcement today that the shows will now take place in June 2022. The Antipodean heavyweights will play eight gigs in the UK next year alongside a clutch of other shows in Ireland, Germany and Spain. The British leg of the tour kicks off with a trio of back-to-back gigs at the Camden Roundhouse in London next summer.
A statement posted on Crowded House’s social media channels today read: “For obvious reasons we are postponing our UK/Europe tour to 2022. Thanks everyone for being so understanding and staying strong through this crazy time. We cannot wait to be playing music for you all. What a cathartic time it will be.”
For obvious reasons we are postponing our UK/Europe tour to 2022. Thanks everyone for being so understanding and staying strong through this crazy time. We cannot wait to be playing music for you all. What a cathartic time it will be.
Crowded House pic.twitter.com/yxfCNIJCby— Crowded House (@CrowdedHouseHQ) March 31, 2021
The Australasian five-piece, led passionately as always by multi-talented Kiwi frontman Neil Finn, are set to release their seventh studio album Dreamers Are Waiting on June 4th this year; their first new record in eleven years. The LP, which was recorded in Los Angeles and New Zealand on either side of 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns, will be the first Crowded House album to feature Neil Finn’s sons Liam (guitar) and Elroy (drums) as fully-fledged band members.
Finn Senior has hinted that the new record will represent a change in direction for the group, who scored a succession of hits across the globe in the 1980s and 1990s with the likes of Don’t Dream It’s Over, Weather With You, Fall At Your Feet, Locked Out, Better Be Home Soon, Four Seasons In One Day and Not The Girl You Think You Are. Finn, who is also a member of Fleetwood Mac (having replaced Lindsey Buckingham in 2018) told NME: “I’ve always been afraid of just repeating the same formulas, and somehow this feels like a fresh and authentic way to reapproach Crowded House today with an awareness of all our history and where, how and why it began in the first place.”
The band unveiled the debut single from the new LP, Whatever You Want, last October. Speaking about the contemporary pertinence of the lyrics, Neil Finn told ABC: “I guess in the year we’re in, and in the age of misinformation and untruth and propaganda and stuff, the idea that there’s a lot of people saying whatever they think that people want to hear – or, alternatively, what their boss wants to hear – is an interesting thought. It could sometimes just be the voices in your own head doing mischief and reassuring you about your own fears and anxieties. But the ‘yes men’ and the enablers, it’s kind of directed to them.”
A follow-up single, To The Island, was released last month. The melodic number also provided a title for Crowded House’s 2021 tour of the Finns’ native New Zealand – with the group playing to adoring capacity crowds in scenes that will doubtless prompt tinges of envy among live music fans in the Northern Hemisphere.
Crowded House’s 2022 UK Tour schedule is as follows:
05/06/22 – Roundhouse – London
07/06 – Roundhouse – London
08/06 – Roundhouse – London
10/06 – SSE Hydro – Glasgow
11/06 – Open Air Theatre – Scarborough
13/06 – Motorpoint Arena – Cardiff
14/06 – Utilita Arena – Birmingham
30/06 – Castlefield Bowl – Manchester
