Crowded House plays old hits and new releases at Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail

“Something So Strong” and more comes to the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater on Tuesday with Crowded House’s “Gravity Stairs” tour — the band’s eighth studio release.

In 1985, New Zealander vocalist and guitarist Neil Finn formed the band with Australians Paul Hester (who died in 2005) and Nick Seymour, the latter of whom performs with Finn on Tuesday. American keyboardist, record producer and longtime friend Mitchell Froom joins on keyboards, along with Finn’s sons: Elroy and Liam Finn.

Froom agreed to tour with the band if it delivered the original hits, including its 1986 self-titled debut that went platinum, in a way that remains faithful to the recordings. 

“We had somewhat strayed in terms of how we would deliver those songs. He felt there was an integrity to delivering the songs the way they were recorded,” Finn told the Dayton Daily News in August. “I’ve really enjoyed that; I’d forgotten how simple or instinctive those parts were.”

Liam Finn has talked about how fun it has been to hone in on the authentic tones of the early records.

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“We are still playing with looseness and an alive spirit. But getting those nuances, you can see people visibly in the crowd going, ‘Oh, he did that little slide,’ and it’s really satisfying,” he told the Dayton Daily News.

The original members disbanded in 1996 after several farewell concerts. Finn and his brother, Tim, who played with the band on and off throughout the years, had won an OBE award in 1993 for their contributions to New Zealand’s music, and Crowded House had gathered several top 100 hits, including “Fall at Your Feet,” “Weather With You,” “Distant Sun,” “Locked Out,” “Instinct ” and “Not the Girl You Think You Are.” Hitting the top 10 were “Something So Strong” and “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” the latter of which won Song of the Year and Best Video at the inaugural ARIA Music Awards in 1987. The video also garnered MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist that year.

The group reformed in 2006 with Matt Sherrod replacing Hester and released “Time on Earth” and “Intriguer,” albums that each reached No. 1 in Australia. After a hiatus, Crowded House reunited in 2020 with the current lineup and released its latest album, “Gravity Stairs.”

Titled after the concept of using will to ascend the symbolic struggle of life, the album features “Magic Piano,” which talks about sensing one’s weight walking upstairs. Yet, music emboldens the ascent, and the chorus states, “Here am I, so bright, Here am I, so light.” It was one of the first songs the musicians worked on for the album.

“It was a very different song when we started playing it. It was probably ambitious as a first recording because it’s not a simple song — it’s got a lot of twists and turns,” Neil Finn wrote in a press release. “But the aim is to produce something that sounds effortless, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, and that it’s always existed like that. That’s the art of record making.”

Having always been a “jammy kind of band,” as Liam Finn described it, he said the group has reached a new height, due to mutual trust.

“We can kind of go in any direction we choose,” he said. “There’s no rules. It’s really free.”

That’s especially true in the United States. As Neil Finn pointed out in an ABC Audio interview in August, in contrast to other places where audiences can be a little standoffish, “American audiences seem to be quite open to whatever experiences we throw at them. They give you a lot of freedom. And they also come along … deciding they’re gonna have a good time.”