Backstreet Boys are back –slick as
ever
Backstreet Boys/Click Five/Kaci Brown
Tweeter Center, Mansfield, Massachusetts
August 14, 2005
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in The Boston Globe, August 16, 2005
With the Tweeter Center almost full to capacity with an ecstatically enthusiastic audience who provided a constant underscore of screaming, the Backstreet Boys showed on Sunday night that they could survive the five-year gap between Black & Blue, their last album of all-new material, and the recent Never Gone. The quintet, once the kings of a fertile boy-band scene, performed a two-hour set so meticulously arranged that it took a series of Severe Thunderstorm Warnings culminating in an unscheduled 15-minute break to add some spontaneity to the proceedings.
Otherwise, everything went by at a steady clip, with video montages, pyro and laser displays and two bits involving Nick Carter ostentatiously playing guitar to no discernible effect during “Climbing The Walls” and “Just Want You To Know.” Kevin Richardson’s piano playing during “Weird World” and “Incomplete” was more integral, but the group mostly performed their busy but not especially accomplished choreography, played to the fans and passed the lead around like a vocal football. They were at their best when they showed off their harmonizing in songs like “The One,” “Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely” and “Siberia,” which featured a warmly insistent ticking-clock riff as artificial snow came down.
If the Backstreet Boys were all about excess, the Click Five’s earlier 35-minute set was sleeker, compact and altogether more efficient. The band, whose debut Greetings From Imrie House comes out today, was as much about showmanship as about musicianship, with matching suits (even the guitar straps matched), choreographed playing and we-love-you exhortations like, “Boston, get on your feet, you look better when you’re standing!” More than anything else, they were like Fountains Of Wayne’s very own Monkees.
That turned out to be a potent combination, as the audience screamed nearly as loudly as they would for the Backstreet Boys. The crowd already knew “Just The Girl” well enough from radio and TRL to sing along, but practically every song could be a single, from the slick, Waltham-like “Catch Your Wave” to the anthemic and lighter-ready “I’ll Take My Chances.” Their cover of “I Think We’re Alone Now” was a perfect choice for countless reasons, and if the Click Five are as inconsequential as Tommy James and the Shondells, they might at least prove to be as catchy.
Opener Kaci Brown failed to create a distinct impression of who she wants to be in a brief four-song set that touched on hip-pop, plaintive confessional and bombastic power balladry.