Neil Finn and Crowded House bring past and present music to Wolf Trap

There exists somewhere an alternate universe where Neil Finn is merely a frustrated elementary school music teacher and not the frontman for Crowded House. At Wolf Trap on Monday night, the affable singer-songwriter kept trying to get the audience to sing in sections. As fundamental a text in melody and harmony as his songbook is, he couldn't get the crowd to do anything more sophisticated than repeat-after-him on "Weather With You" or "Better Be Home Soon."

Fortunately, he was in strong voice. Touring in support of "Intriguer," the second Crowded House album since the 52-year-old Finn reconvened the band in 2007 after a decade-long hiatus, he and his bespoke-suited associates devoted nearly a third of their 115-minute, 23-song set to tunes not old enough to drive, weaving them in among a baker's dozen corralled on the group's 1996 best-of collection.

The newer material contributed some highlights: "Isolation" started off ethereal and trippy but turned bloody before its time-shifting finale. (The older "Private Universe" had introduced a welcome strain of psychedelia to Finn's elegant, disciplined minor-key pop.) Finn invited his son Liam (several albums into his own career) to sing and play on "Say That Again," with a chorus that begins: "You've got to be your own man."

Finn indulged two requests for rarities, with one -- "There Goes God" -- submitted via stage-bound paper airplane. He dedicated the other, "Italian Plastic," to its author, original Crowded House drummer Paul Hester, who committed suicide in 2005.

With its internally illuminated lawn ornaments of geese, mushrooms and what looked to be short guys in mustaches, the stage set evoked the video game "Super Mario Bros.," a reference point as musty as, well, Crowded House. But the performance felt very much a thing of the present.

Klimek is a freelance writer.