Live at The Powerstation
21 February 2026
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
We arrive at Auckland’s beloved The Powerstation about thirty minutes after doors. The room is… sparse. A polite 150 souls scattered across the floor like early parishioners waiting for mass. But I’m not fooled. This is Hothouse Flowers. The faithful are across the road at Galbraith's Alehouse, doing what generations of Irish gig-goers have done before communion: fortifying themselves.
Had I known who the support act was, I would have joined them.
Sionna are Lorcan (guitar, vocal) and Helen (fiddle, vocal) lean hard into Irish skiffle. Plenty of charm. Plenty of banter. They wouldn’t sound out of place in a rural County Clare pub where Guinness flows and standards are… flexible.
But when they attempted Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, the performance veered from homage to pile-up. Lorcan’s vocal wandered somewhere between earnest folk troubadour and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo stuck in existential crisis. A car wreck indeed. Enough said.
By the time the lights dim, the demographic is clear: seasoned souls. Veterans. People who bought People on vinyl the first time around. I include myself here. South of 50-plus and proud.
And then the roar.
Out walk the Flowers, no pyro, no digital backdrops, no faux-apocalyptic visuals. Just presence.
Front and centre: Liam Ó Maonlaí, barefoot, wearing what looks like an old Indian pith helmet, a red Native American-style top, white cheesecloth trousers, a folk mystic who’s wandered in from Glastonbury circa 1989 and somehow bypassed the last three decades of cynicism. While today’s arena rock stars tend to arrive like gunslingers, Ó Maonlaí arrives like a monk.
He opens in Irish, a Himalayan styled chant filtered through Dublin soul and the venue falls silent. Not polite silence. Devotional silence. The kind where breathing feels intrusive.
I haven’t seen Hothouse Flowers since 1991 at Wembley Stadium, opening for INXS in front of 78,000 people. Back then they were charting hitters riding the wave of Don’t Go and I’m Sorry. They were vibrant, wild, unpredictable.
Tonight? Masters.
The voice of Ó Maonlaí remains astonishing, falsetto during “I’m Sorry” lands effortlessly, pipes intact, soul fully operational. During “Movies,” he springs from behind the piano mid-song, striking upward, almost yogic poses. At one point he moves with a jerking, art-articulated rhythm reminiscent of David Byrne in full cerebral flow.
Between songs he smiles like a delighted child. “Well, I enjoyed that,” he says after one particularly feverish workout.
We did too.
Fiachna Ó Braonáin plays bottleneck slide that drips Delta blues into Celtic soil, wah-pedal roaring one moment, penny whistle weaving through the next.
Peter O’Toole shifts between bouzouki, acoustic guitar and electric bass, all masterfully.
Martin Brunsden’s double bass anchors the low end, though vocally he sings just off-axis of the mic all night, pouring heart into the room rather than directly into amplification.
Dave Clarke’s drumming is crisp, left hand riding traditional grip in flashes that evoke Copeland’s rhythmic energy, tight, articulate, never indulgent.
The stage? A simple black backdrop. No LED screens. No distractions.
“Feel Like Living” lands with warmth, while at one point Ó Maonlaí steps forward, singing off-mic directly to those of us in the front row, “You’re the one that makes me feel…” unamplified, human, fragile. In a venue accustomed to distortion and sweat, this is vulnerability.
Before performing an enchanting, almost mystical prayer, Ó Maonlaí instructs:
“Put your energy into silence. I don’t want you to applaud after this prayer.”
And for once in modern gig history, almost everyone obeys.
One rogue clap echoes. Brief. Unwanted. Swiftly absorbed into the ether.
Sweet Marie soars with harmonies that lift the entire room, fans clapping in unison, transported into that rare state where nostalgia doesn’t feel backward-looking but forward-moving.
This is the thing about Hothouse Flowers. They were always more than their late-80s hits. Emerging from Dublin’s busking culture in the mid-80s, blending gospel, Celtic folk and rock long before “world music” was a marketing category, they built a reputation as one of Ireland’s most compelling live bands. Their debut album and my personal favourite People hit No.1 in Ireland and cracked the UK charts, and decades later they still tour globally, playing festivals across Europe and intimate rooms like this with equal spiritual intensity.
Tonight in Auckland, they didn’t play like legacy artists. They played like seekers.
Three bows at the end. Linked arms. No theatrics. Just gratitude.
Leaving The Powerstation, you couldn’t help but feel lighter. Not because you’d been bombarded by spectacle, but because you’d witnessed musicians who have refined chaos into craft, ego into empathy.
Thirty-five years ago I watched them command Wembley.
Tonight, in a room of a few hundred, they were even better.
Rock and roll doesn’t always need fire.
Sometimes it just needs silence.
Reviewer: Paul Marshall
Photography by Paul Marshall
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