Invite a band famously fixated with the weather to play a British festival and there’s bound to be trouble. Yet not even Neil Finn, veteran frontman of the recently reformed Crowded House, could fathom the freak conditions that accompanied his group’s first UK gig in more than a decade.

Dark clouds had hovered throughout the first day of Hyde Park Calling – a weekend-long event aimed at the older end of the rock-fan spectrum – producing sporadic showers during sets by the Feeling and the impressive newcomers Ghosts. Then Crowded House came on and suddenly the gloom gave way to bright sunshine. A sombrely-suited, but fabulously coiffured Finn grabbed the moment, leading an arms-aloft audience through a euphoric rendition of the evergreen hit Weather with You.

Their good fortune continued for 40 minutes, in which adored oldies such as Distant Sun were mixed with folk-tinged or occasionally dance beats-backed material from their forthcoming album Time on Earth. The set also included the bassist Nick Seymour rolling down a walkway into the crowd and a Finn freak-out over a fluffed keyboard part.

Then, as suddenly as the sun had appeared, came a downpour so fierce that every instrument except the drum kit and Finn’s acoustic guitar had to be protected with plastic sheeting. The singer tried to soldier on solo, but when an attempt to orchestrate a mass umbrella wave failed, even he fled for cover.

The storm had stopped by Peter Gabriel’s closing set, although vast puddles were forming underfoot. The former Genesis singer, who turned down a fortune to join his old band on tour this summer, resembled a crazy, comic-book scientist – bald headed, silver beard neatly trimmed, black gilet and a ball microphone fixed to an earpiece that spent most of the set up at his forehead, rather than down by his mouth.

Seven giant candle-shaped lights framed Gabriel’s incessantly busy band, which included his daughter Melanie on haunting backing vocals and keyboards, but the prog-rock-style stunts of his last tour had been ditched to focus solely on the songs.

The result was sometimes self-indulgent, but peppered with moments of adventurously constructed rock that may never be hip but were received joyously by the grey-haired fans, who were moved to dance. The rhythmic glockenspiel of No Self Control, the skilful stomp of I Don’t Remember and a broody Blood of Eden were highlights until the set-closer Solsbury Hill and an encore of Sledgehammer sent muddy feet home happy.

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