Neil Finn, enjoying himself

"It's good fun playing music for a living," Neil Finn said from the stage of the Keswick Theatre on Friday night. And, indeed, Finn seemed to be having plenty of it, so much that he repeated the sentiment several times. For 21/2 hours, well past the Keswick's soft curfew, he skimmed the cream off a 37-year career that includes Split Enz, Crowded House, and five solo albums. (The most recent,

Dizzy Heights

, naturally got a generous airing.)

The show was lively and spontaneous, opening with a fanfare played on the Keswick's pipe organ, which made a repeat appearance during Dizzy Heights' "Divebomber." Finn started at a grand piano set off to one side, then took his place at center stage by bouncing up and dashing across its black-lacquered lid. But it wasn't exactly "fun," which, in the word cloud describing Finn's music is a cirrostratus wisp at best.

Though there's heartfelt simplicity at its core, Finn's music has often verged on sounding overworked, a tendency best kept in check when he's collaborating with bandmates or his brother, Tim. But with a six-piece band that, apart from Finn's wife, Sharon, on bass, looked to be in various stages of their 20s, it felt like there was no one to push back against Finn's proclivity to pile guitar effects, keyboard parts, and the like on top of songs that not only didn't need but in some cases seemed to actively shed them.

Without exception, the evening's best moments were when Finn dismissed all or at least part of his band, like a piano version of "Hole in the River" whose left-hand octaves added a surprising hint of Sturm und Drang.

Openers Midlake, who stripped their normally expansive psychedelic rock down to its acoustic bones to tour with Finn, joined him for a haunting "Private Universe," the relative silence giving their lush vocal harmonies and Jesse Chandler's flute room to breathe. The spartan dynamics might have been less fun, but they yielded something more.