The second Split Enz walk onto the stage at the TikTok Entertainment Centre, the atmosphere feels almost archetypal, like something pulled straight from Carl Jung’s collective unconscious. Thousands of people erupt simultaneously, not just in recognition of songs they know, but in response to something lodged far deeper in Australasian cultural memory. Nearly two decades since their last major reunion, the Forever Enz Tour arrives carrying the weight of nostalgia, but what unfolds tonight never feels trapped in the past. Instead, it feels strangely eternal, as if these songs and these strange, theatrical figures have always existed somewhere just beneath the surface, waiting to reappear.
Before that, support arrives in the form of Vika & Linda, whose harmonies sweep across the arena with warmth and effortless precision. The sisters, who first rose to prominence singing with The Black Sorrows, bring decades of chemistry to the stage, their voices locking together so naturally it feels almost instinctive. There’s a deep affection from the crowd throughout their set, especially for a duo whose own career has quietly become one of the most enduring stories in Australian music.
The stage backdrop for Split Enz is dominated by a giant curtain which, in the lead up to the band’s arrival, parts briefly to reveal flashes of Split Enz’s elaborate and gaudy costumes while archival footage from the band’s earliest years flickers across it. Eventually the members emerge wrapped inside what looks like a gigantic orange pillowcase before bursting free to huge applause.
Dressed in their trademark bright suits, Tim Finn, Neil Finn, Eddie Rayner and Noel Crombie bounce across the stage with the kind of theatrical energy that made Split Enz so singular in the first place. For a band formed in Auckland in 1972, whose early years fused progressive art-rock with outright absurdity before mutating into one of Australasia’s defining pop acts, there’s remarkably little sense of legacy-act stiffness here. They prance, grin and throw themselves fully into the performance like musicians still chasing the thrill rather than protecting a catalogue.
What immediately stands out is just how strong the Finn brothers’ voices remain. Decades later, both still sound remarkably clear, trading vocals with effortless chemistry while constantly exchanging sly glances across the stage. The whole band appear to be enjoying every second of this reunion. During ‘Missing Person’, I notice that Noel Crombie is quietly playing the triangle and it strikes me that I have genuinely never seen somebody play triangle at a rock concert before. As if that’s not enough, later Crombie ends the band’s set with a spoon solo! It’s the kind of flourish that somehow only makes sense inside the strange theatrical universe of Split Enz.
Stories flow constantly between songs. Tim Finn recalls bumping into somebody from The Radiators a few nights ago, who supported Split Enz back in the 1970s, joking that Eddie Rayner’s sprawling keyboard setup consumed so much room onstage that the Radiators barely had space for their own instruments. Before ‘Stuff and Nonsense’, Tim explains that he wrote the song while living in London at the age of 26. When the song finishes, Neil simply turns toward him and says, “What a song,” prompting Tim to laugh and reply, “Thank you Neil.”
For ‘Matinee Idyll’, Neil straps on a mandolin and reminisces about the band first performing the song on the talent show New Faces, where they only managed to place fifth. This sparks a hilarious detour into a conversation about why New Zealand does not compete in Eurovision, alongside discussion of Australia’s Delta Goodrem recently finishing fourth in the competition.
The band then launch into ‘My Mistake’, a title that briefly becomes very literal when Tim accidentally loses his place and the group are forced to restart the song from the beginning. The audience loves every second of it. By now people are on their feet, huge singalongs bouncing around the arena. At one point Noel Crombie picks up a guitar and launches into a solo while the rest of the band step back to watch him attack the instrument with his feet before dropping to his knees to continue playing directly on the stage floor. Neil Finn laughs, “Is there anything this man cannot do?”
During the instrumental ‘Double Happy’, the curtains part again to reveal a montage of Noel Crombie’s iconic costume designs through the decades. There’s also brilliant interplay between Neil Finn and bassist James Milne throughout the song, both musicians bouncing off one another with obvious delight.
The crowd is loving it – every chorus rebounds back toward the stage in huge waves while people dance in aisles and sing lyrics. Songs like ‘Six Months in a Leaky Boat’, ‘I Got You’ and ‘I See Red’ land with the same strange timelessness that has always defined Split Enz, reminding everyone here just how deeply the band reshaped the DNA of Australasian pop and new wave music.
What’s most striking tonight is how playful everything still feels. There’s no attempt to sand away the eccentricities that once made Split Enz outsiders. If anything, the band lean harder into them. The theatrical gestures, strange percussive instruments, angular rhythms and surrealist flourishes all remain intact, giving the show a sense of joyful unpredictability missing from so many modern arena productions.
All in all, it’s a hugely entertaining evening from a band who still seem genuinely delighted to be sharing a stage together. Split Enz aren’t performing like a group revisiting old glories. They’re performing like they’ve stumbled back into a universe where none of this magic ever really disappeared in the first place.
The tour continues with one more show in Sydney followed by Perth and Adelaide, Tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser
