BACK in 1994, after Crowded House sold out the Hammersmith Apollo three nights in a row, they had a party back in their dressing room. While most rock parties consist of drunken men shouting and 50 jaded blondes waiting for the coke to come out, at Crowded House?s party they popped open the red wine, lit candles on the piano and had a two-hour singsong. After running through most of the Beatles? catalogue, lead singer Neil Finn proposed the room have a crack at Amazing Grace. Ahhh, but does anyone know the lyrics to the second verse? he asked. Me! Neil, me! I know all the words! I squealed. Oops, bit of red wine on your carpet. I?ll just stand on it. So Neil Finn and I sang together in a candle-lit room. As I looked around, with my tiny drunken pinhole vision, I noticed the band?s press officer was crying. Up until about 30 seconds ago, I had always remembered this as her being moved. Looking back now, it was probably agony.

Anyway, this is to illustrate what Neil Finn, now two albums into his solo career, is all about. He?s about singsongs.

He goes away, writes these incredibly beautiful, complex songs (all the comments about him being New Zealand?s Paul McCartney are spot on ) and then brings them to a room full of drunken revellers so that it might do that rare but chemically necessary thing of raising its voice as one. Indeed, his commitment to bringing strangers together to sing is so intense that he?s just completed a mini-tour of Britain whereby his band, every night, consists of locals playing their favourite songs with him. That?s so cool. You?d never catch Manic Street Preachers doing that.

Edinburgh! Do you want to play guitar?, he asks, after a brief canter through four of his more recent songs (brief synopsis: he misses his wife and children, but there?s something about life on the road that makes you feel more alive; and sudden minor chord changes and harmonies are still very much the way to express these things). The guitar-part goes like this: da-da-da-da. Can you be my guitar? As the room guitars away, he launches into Pineapple Head, augmented by double bass and lovely brushed snares.

Charmed by its own brilliance, the audience then spontaneously breaks into Summer Holiday, which Neil is good enough to accompany them in, before reminding them with Last to Know a drifty waltz off the last album, met with squeals and Last Night of the Proms-style cheering that there?s still serious singer-songwriter business to be done here.

Truth be told, these Neil Finn solo gigs don?t quite equal the glory days of Crowded House - it takes a band to create that kind of atmosphere, and despite Neil?s praise for his current gang, it just says: 'Neil Finn' on the ticket. But as a reminder that Finn is still trickling gold into the atmosphere, it couldn?t be sweeter. And we all got to sing Better Be Home Soon before the bus left.