Concert Review - Hutt Sounds 2025 - Upper Hutt - 2nd March 2025

Presented By Plus 1 & Brewtown Upper Hutt

Andy McClusky Live At Hutt Sounds 2025 Photo Credit Rob Harbers

Review By: Rob Harbers

Artist/Band: The Narcs, Kim Willoughby, Diesel, OMD

Venue/City: Brewtown, Upper Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand

Date of Event: Sunday 2nd March 2025

This year’s iteration of the Summer Sounds series has concluded, with a winning combination of acts, at Upper Hutt’s Brewtown, leaving a deeply satisfied audience in its wake!

Kicking off the event were the Narcs, with special guest Kim Willoughby. Leading straight out of the gate with ‘No Turning Back’, they then proceeded, over the course of 10 songs, to remind us all just how many of their songs populated the musical landscape during their peak. ‘Lazy Susan’, ‘Over My Head’, the towering ‘Heart and Soul’, and more besides. Interspersed with Kim’s ‘80s rock chick’ persona in renditions of The Pretenders ‘Precious’ Blondie’s ‘One Way or Another’, and Jenny Morris’s ‘She Has to Be Loved’. A set then packed with the material much if the audience would remember and a great way to start proceedings!

Sauntering on to the stage with a touchingly casual “How’re you doing?” Diesel ripped into a set that showed his love of a funky groove. Similar to the Narcs, reminding again what a powerhouse he was in his time! ‘One More Time’ commencing the session, followed in short order by ‘Man Alive’; settling into a soulful and expressive pattern that was to continue through the next half a dozen songs culminating in a powerful ‘Cry in Shame’, dedicated to the just-departed Angie Stone. Perfect fare for a sunny Sunday afternoon!
Signalling their imminent arrival with the playing of “You Shook Me All Night Long”, Jon Stevens and crew made it clear they were here to rock! Playing a set largely drawn from Jon’s time with both Noiseworks and INXS; this was a full-on performance that took no prisoners from the opening ‘Kick’ onwards. The songs largely alternated between the two bands’ oeuvres, the Noiseworks stuff in particular bringing to mind the great shock experienced by many when the previously pop-oriented Stevens was heard fronting music with considerably more power and volume! But just so that nobody could forget (as much as they might have wanted to!) where it all started, amid this came both ‘Jezebel’ and ‘Montego Bay’, the brace of songs with which he burst in to the public consciousness. An interesting marker of ‘how it started’ vs ‘how it’s going’, if nothing else!

With things having got as loud as they were going to, Tom Bailey dialled back the volume a little, coming on in a white suit and glittery silver shoes to ‘Love on Your Side’. In an impressive commitment to resetting the gender balance of the music industry (either that or playing out a Robert Palmer fantasy!) his backing musicians; were of the distaff side something that in an ideal world wouldn’t be worthy of comment but we’re not in such a utopic paradise just yet, so it does still stand out!

There ensued a journey through the history of what must be remembered, was one of the big bands of the 80s-they played Live Aid, after all! I was at their concert in Auckland 39 years ago(!) and this was inevitably, was a less ambitious production than what took place then, but still impressive for all that. So many of the highlights of their brief time in the spotlight – ‘King for A Day’ indeed!

And a surprising cover version, introduced as one from “some friends of ours from New York”- those friends being Talking Heads and the song ‘Psycho Killer’ showing the place held by this catalogue in the hearts of many to this day, the set closer ‘Hold Me Now’ morphed in to an a capella sing-along, the crowd’s contribution a big part of what made it work. And then they were gone, leaving an audience well primed for electronically tinged 80’s reminiscence-fortunate, given what was to follow!

And so we come to the headliners-an act I’ll admit to being one of my guilty pleasures for many years now. Yes, for all that I love the heavy, the indie, and the downright quirky, there’s something about OMD that cuts through my cynicism and finds a place in my heart and I don’t have a clue why or what it is!

I followed them for a long period in the 80s ‘Junk Culture’ being a particular favourite. As such, this was the act I was most looking forward to, the driving factor of my attendance to be honest. And there was no disappointment at all at to finally experience this material in a live setting.

Leading off with their first ever single ‘Electricity’, Andy McCluskey asking the crowd if they could “dance like it’s 1979?” And then, post-song, “Have you got enough energy? because I’ll warn you, we’re fucking relentless!”;  this was exemplified by jumping straight in to the second single, ‘Messages’, and then a leap down the years to ‘History Of Modern (Part 1)’.
The pace slowed a little with Paul Humphreys’ taking to the mic for ‘Forever Live and Die’, a song that was still quite new when it was last played in Aotearoa, at the Wellington Town Hall on 14th  December 1986 to be precise. This also inspired some banter between Andy and Paul, Andy telling us that now we can hear some better songs than that one (being one composed by Paul)! All in good spirits though.

The trio of songs from the ‘Architecture and Morality’ album featured two of the ones I was there to hear namely ‘Souvenir’ and ‘Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)’ the latter giving drummer Stuart Kershaw a workout! ‘Talking Loud and Clear’, one of the standouts on ‘Junk Culture’ was the instigator for collective arm-waving, even in the VIP tent! Andy’s question “Are you tired yet?” No! “Correct answer” led into the lively ‘So In Love’ and ‘Dreaming’, the former featuring the sax of Martin Cooper (also on keyboards). ‘Sailing On the Seven Seas’ was accompanied by Andy’s request to “If you know the chorus, sing it with me”, a challenge gleefully taken up.

But all good things must end, the scheduled 9pm finish time looming up, offering a “last chance to dance” to the greatest banger in the catalogue, and perhaps the cheeriest anti-war song ever, ‘Enola Gay’, and dance they did! Leaving with a promise to be “back in less than 38 years”, here’s hoping for an extension to the already scheduled 2027 return to Australia, if this occurs, I’ll be lining up for entry! And probably fighting for tickets against many of last night’s fellow audience members, if their reactions are anything to go by...
Overall then, a truly impressive experience, one that included a bucket list band, and recalled many memories! Bring on more!!

Setlists:
The Narcs and Kim Willoughby
No Turning Back
Summerhill Stone
Precious (Pretenders cover)
Lazy Susan
One Way or Another (Blondie cover)
Smile Surfing
Heart and Soul
Over My Head
She Has to Be Loved (Jenny Morris cover)
Diamonds On China

Diesel:
One More Time
Man Alive
Never Miss Your Water
Come To Me
Tip of My Tongue
Cry In Shame
Jon Stevens:
Kick
Touch
New Sensation
Little Bit of Love
What You Need
No Lies
Never Tear Us Apart
Jezebel
Montego Bay
Need You Tonight (with Is This Love)
Hot Chilli Woman
Don’t Change a Thing
Take Me Back
Tom Bailey:
Love on Your Side
You Take Me Up
If You Were Here
East is East (?)
Lay Your Hands On Me
Lies
Psycho Killer (Talking Heads cover)
King For A Day
Doctor Doctor
Hold Me Now
OMD:
Electricity
Messages
History of Modern (Part 1)
Forever Live and Die
Souvenir
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)
Talking Loud and Clear
Secret
So In Love
Dreaming
Pandora’s Box
Locomotion
Sailing on the Seven Seas
Enola Gay

Hutt Sounds PR 2025

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