Neil and Liam Finn, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 11 February 2018

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Neil Finn, Crowded House singer-songwriter and household name, performed at a Twilight at Taronga concert in Taronga Zoo, Sydney, a co-headliner with his elder son Liam, although his younger son Elroy and wife Sharon were also in the band.

Support came from Alex the Astronaut.

Twilight at Taronga is an annual series of summer concerts that take place in a natural amphitheatre in the grounds of the zoo itself, with Sydney Harbour and the iconic bridge a backdrop behind the stage.

Little more than a year earlier, Neil played on the opposite shore in a Crowded House reunion concert on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, to an audience of over 100,000 and broadcast live on TV.

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Alex The Astronaut, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 11 February 2018

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Alex the Astronaut, aka Alexandra Lynn, is a young 22-year-old Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist from Sydney’s Upper North Shore. A maths and physics graduate (hence the ‘astronaut’ reference) from Long Island University, USA, which she obtained on a soccer scholarship, her record label, Minkowski Records is named after the Minkowski diagram, which illustrates the Special Theory of Relativity on the relationship between space and time.

She has a soulful voice and, accompanied by an acoustic guitar – sometimes a backing band – she writes narrative songs that already have reviewers describing her as a young female Paul Kelly.

She released two folk-pop EPs in 2017, and was nominated for JJJ Radio’s J Award for Unearthed Artist of the Year. Her song, Not Worth Hiding, was seen as the unofficial anthem for Australia’s Yes campaign in the 2017 plebiscite on same-sex marriage. The lyrics describe a young girl coming out as a lesbian.

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It’s not worth hiding if you’ve got something to say
And it’s not worth smiling if you’re feeling in pain
And it’s not worth hiding if you think you might be gay
Or different in another way – you’re perfect just the same

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On her Twilight at Taronga performance she featured songs from her two releases, To Whom it may Concern and See You Soon, respectively, many of which tell stories from her experiences in New York, prior to her return to Sydney last year.

Onstage she maintains a chatty banter between songs. She revealed she recently tried out for the Western Sydney Giants Australian Rules women’s football team, but failed the physical, which looks like we’ll be seeing more of her on the concert stage and not on a playing field.

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Neil and Liam Finn, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 11 February 2018

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With the sun setting and the harbour lit up behind, Neil Finn took to the stage with several members of his family, his son Elroy on drums, wife Sharon alternating backing vocals and a violin bass made popular by Paul McCartney in The Beatles, and his elder son Liam who took co-headlining status.

The set comprised half of Liam’s songs and the rest Crowded House hits and the Split Enz classics Message to My Girl and I Got You, to which the crowd responded enthusiastically. They were expected; you can’t have a living treasure like Neil Finn onstage without him reprising some of his timeless pop anthems.

Liam has been making a name for himself in recent years without the umbrella of his father’s fame, undertaking world tours, playing festivals, and supporting the likes of Eddie Vedder – for whom he opened on his 2008-9 US tour – Wilco, The Black Keys and Pearl Jam.

A multi-instrumentalist, onstage he mainly played a 12-string guitar designed by Dutch inventor and experimental luthier Yuri Landman.

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Neil and Liam Finn, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 11 February 2018

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Landman specifically designed a cymbalum – a 24-string chordophone – for Liam called a Tafelberg, named after an Africaans flat-topped mesa.

The night started with two Crowded House numbers, Seven Worlds Collide and Pineapple Face, before Neil switched from guitar to keyboard, and thereafter the father and son team alternated lead vocals on their own songs, respectively.

Liam’s songs are not unlike his fathers in their structure and slow tempo, but they’re not likely to enter the nation’s psyche as the soundtrack to living in the way Neil’s Four Seasons in One Day, Don’t Dream it’s Over and Private Universe have.

Neil revealed that his favourite animal is the sloth from watching a David Attenborough wildlife documentary, and dedicated Fall at your Feet to the animals resident in the zoo, urging the crowd not to wake them on the way out.

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Neil and Liam Finn, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, Sydney, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 11 February 2018

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After multiple audience singalogs and the band members swapping instruments, they played two rousing encores.

The second encore involved a medley jam that included parts of First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, before the inevitable finale, Better be Home Soon saw the crowd depart in time before the skies opened and a storm lashed the North Shore.

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Check out Alec Smart’s gallery of this show HERE

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AMNPLIFY – DB

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