With the release of their self-titled debut in 1986, Crowded House made an immediate splash. The album rose to No. 12 on the Billboard charts, and the band scored Top 10 hits with “Something So Strong” and “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” both of which made it into their recent performance at Wolf Trap.

Their catalog is much deeper and extensive than a few big hits, though, and they showed why they’ve developed such a strong international following at their Wolf Trap show.

Songwriter Neil Finn, a native of New Zealand, formed Crowded House in Australia as his previous band, Split Enz, was in their final days. (The set included two songs from the Splitz Enz era, “Message to My Girl” and “I Got You,” the latter of the start of their encore, at the Filene Center on Sept. 3.) At first playing in their Australasian base, they came to Los Angeles to record, where they were paired with novice producer Mitchell Froom, who is playing keys on this tour. (The success of this album opened doors for Froom as a producer; he went to work with artists like Suzanne Vega and Los Lobos, for whom he produced their masterpiece, Kiko.) The name Crowded House was inspired by the cramped apartment they lived in in LA after Capitol Records rejected The Mullanes (Finn’s middle name) and Largest Living Things.

As good as their debut LP was, their next few albums, their next two records, Temple of Law Men and Woodface, were arguably even stronger efforts, even if the former didn’t match the chart success of their debut. Several of those songs — “Into Temptation,” “Sister Madly,” and “When You Come” — made it into the set and got some of the strongest crowd reactions of the show. Woodface was the album that broke them in England behind the success of “Weather With You.” The set included two more tracks from that album: “Fall at Your Feet” and “Four Seasons In A Day.”

Watch the official music video for “Four Seasons In One Day” by Crowded House on YouTube:

Neil Finn has a fine and particularly Antipodean sense of humor that shined through in his stage banter. After “Nails in My Feet,” he somehow got to saying, “We loved the Brady Bunch when were kids. Now I think it’s highly suspect.” “Bad Times Good,” which was released in 2021, mentions packages because, “It was Covid, and every day we had about a dozen Amazon boxes.” He introduced “Teenage Summer” saying, “We were teenagers once, and it our hearts, we still are.” He mentioned that the video for “Howl” had a wolf in it.

Those last two songs were on their most recent album, this year’s Gravity Stairs, as were “Oh Hi” and “Magic Piano.”  Finn cowrote “Private Universe” with the excellent and underappreciated Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly. The set also included “World Where You Live,” “Either Side of the World,” and “Distant Suns.”

At various times, the band has included several members of Neil’s family, including his brother Tim and his sons Liam and Elroy. It was Liam’s birthday, and they celebrated by playing “Happy Birthday to You” and a bit of the Beatles’ “Birthday” during their encore. After the birthday festivities, Neil noted that a request for “Catherine Wheels” had made it on stage via paper airplane, praising the design skills of whoever had thrown it. They ended the night with, appropriately enough, “Better Be Home Soon.”

Michigander, the project of Great Lake State singer-songwriter Jason Singer, started the evening with a 30-minute opening set. After his first number, “Super Glue,” he admitted he was “Very nervous about playing in front of such a large crowd without a band, but you all are so kind.” His set continued with “Better,” “Misery,” “48,” and “Stay Out of It.” “Giving Up,” he said, is “an anthem for the people pleasers.” He finished having the crowd sing along to “Let Down,” after which he was treated to a standing ovation.

Michigander’s fine songcraft was an excellent addition to the evening; Neil Finn’s great pop songs are at the heart of Crowded House does. Finn’s excellent lyrics and compositions show that, when it’s done well, with intelligence and taste, pop music can be as deep and as moving as anything that’s out there.