Star-Telegram Live Reviews

The Police/Elvis Costello: Every little thing they do is magic

by Robert Philpot
rphilpot@star-telegram.com
DALLAS _ Near the reviewers' seats during the Police concert at Superpages.com Center on Wednesday were several young people dancing giddily throughout the show, including one guy who seemed to have learned all his moves from the Don't Stand So Close to Me video, which he replicated with abandon.

It was a little distracting, but why complain? After all, isn't this supposed to be part of what concerts are all about -- losing yourself to the music, letting it possess you a little? And it's hard not to get caught up when Stewart Copeland hits that drumbeat that signals the big tempo change in Wrapped Around Your Finger or Andy Summers launches a screaming guitar-solo blitz during When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around or Sting exhorts you to sing along with his "yeahs" and "ee-yos" or when the whole band punches into overdrive on Can't Stand Losing You.

Given the receptive crowd, Sting probably could have sung the ingredients on a candy-bar wrapper and had complete audience control, but he and his bandmates weren't about to coast. Seeming relaxed and loose, they took a (mostly) straightforward approach to big hits like Every Little Thing She Does is Magic and Every Breath You Take (although Roxanne got a nice stretched-out treatment), saving the change-ups for deeper cuts such as Demolition Man and World is Running Down.

As always, Copeland was a combination of power and finesse, while Summers let loose several machine-gun solos. Sting's voice was, if anything, richer than it was when these songs were in the prime more than 25 years ago. It's a neat trick to take a reunion tour on its second stop through Dallas and not make it feel like a nostalgia act.

Speaking of rich voices, Elvis Costello's was in fine form for his nearly hour-long opening set with the Imposters, which was highlighted by Sting coming out to help Costello sing Alison, a surprisingly good meshing of disparate voices.

Costello and his band -- the ever-versatile keyboardist Steve Nieve, muscular drummer Pete Thomas and reliable vocalist/bassist Davey Faragher -- followed their usual recipe of combining new stuff (unfailingly picking the best cuts from the brand-new Momofuku) with Costello war horses (Alison, Watching the Detectives) and the occasional surprise (the 1983 hit Every Day I Write the Book; Clubland, the lead track from 1981's Trust).

But it must be a little frustrating for Costello, who has headlined North Texas shows many times, to be an opener, even if it does get his songs in front of a larger crowd than he usually plays to. By the end of his set, as he did extended versions of Watching the Detectives and (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, you got the feeling that he didn't want to leave. Wonder if he went and jammed somewhere after the show?

Robert Philpot, 817-390-7872

Radiohead: Urgent sounds from an unforgettable band

by Preston Jones
pjones@star-telegram.com

DALLAS -- An unmistakable urgency threads through Radiohead's catalog like a high-tension wire. Whether bleak or beautiful, the British quintet excels at making music that's both intricate and desperate -- not to mention awe-inspiring.

During Radiohead's sold-out Sunday night show at Superpages.com Center, the final stop on the first leg of their North American tour (after a jaunt in Europe, they'll be back Stateside in the fall), all that intricacy and desperation were on full, mind-blowing display.

Call it a master's class in foreboding rock 'n roll: Frontman Thom Yorke anchored the fiendish rhythms and often melancholy moods with his invigorating presence, leaping about onstage and barely able to contain himself when songs like There There or Idioteque built to their multi-layered climaxes. From first note to last, Radiohead delivered one of the finest live performances yet witnessed in North Texas in 2008.

Of course the last time Radiohead swung through town, they were a year past 1997 and the release of the epochal, chilly OK Computer; the ensuing decade saw the five-member band (along with Yorke, it's Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway) move to the forefront of top-tier bands with more ambition than merely heavy rotation on MTV.

So few successful acts have found the balance between art and commerce that you forget how easy Radiohead makes it all look. It's a rare breed of artist that would take an elegant, fevered work like Computer, enjoy massive success and then promptly turn it inside out for the next album.

But in concert, it's not the sizable sonic maturation that first grabs hold so much as you appreciate more fully the delicate balance of the albums, particularly the garish experimentation of Kid A and Amnesiac. This is a band thriving as it sees fit, with seemingly little regard for the fans who clamor only for the played-to-death hits.

Indeed, during the encores, when Yorke and company moved from Fake Plastic Trees, an early hit from The Bends, to House of Cards, a lovely cut from last year's In Rainbows, the audience response was no less enthused. If there were any fair-weather fans in the building, you wouldn't have known it from the roar that greeted almost every tune, however obscure, during the two-hour set.

Matching the music step for step was the astonishing light display the band brought with 'em. My apologies to Kanye West and his much-ballyhooed Glow in the Dark Tour, but this is easily the most impressive set-up I've seen so far in 2008. Shards of light dangled above the band, often exploding in a glorious riot of color that fairly fried the optic nerves, while multiple video screens projected chaotic montages behind them, reflecting and refracting the five men onstage.

Moments of shattering beauty mingled with moments of searing, explosive power -- that's Radiohead, in a nutshell. One of the world's most important rock bands continues to push forward, setting the agenda while synthesizing art and commerce on its own terms. It's visceral, it's cerebral and it's utterly unforgettable.

Preston Jones is the Star-Telegram pop music critic, 817-390-7713

(Photo credit: Carla Scott)

May 18, 2008 SET LIST
(HT: Ateaseweb.com)

1. All I Need
2. There There
3. 15 Step
4. Bangers and Mash
5. Nude
6. Pyramid Song
7. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
8. The National Anthem
9. Dollars and Cents
10. Faust Arp
11. Videotape
12. A Wolf at the Door
13. Optimistic
14. Reckoner
15. Everything In Its Right Place
16. Idioteque
17. Bodysnatchers

Encore 1
18. Fake Plastic Trees
19. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
20. House of Cards
21. Exit Music (For A Film)
22. The Bends

Encore 2
23. You and Whose Army?
24. Paranoid Android

Roger Waters: Classic spectacle and timeless tunes

by Punch Shaw
Special to the Star-Telegram

DALLAS -- This is what current and future generations of rock fans will never know.
    Roger Waters brought an old fashioned, gaudy spectacle of a stadium show to the Superpages.com Center on Friday night that featured a complete presentation of The Dark Side of the Moon, the legendary album from 1973 by the bass player’s former band, Pink Floyd. 

The concert was remarkable in a number of ways -- the quality of the music, the scale of it all and the intensity of the audience’s involvement, among others. But it was perhaps most remarkable for how it measured so many things that rock has now lost.

    Waters is a prominent member of a dying breed. There are few bands that can justify the expense of putting a show like this one on the road. Friday’s concert, played before a crowd that was very conservatively estimated at 15,000, required the efforts of Waters and a seven-piece band, three back-up singers, a laser light spewing prism-shaped object that descended from above, three video screens displaying miles of video, more spotlights than there are in Hollywood, a blizzard of confetti and an enormous inflated pig -- which may still be floating around out that somewhere, by the way.   

   
    Only the most venerated rock ‘n roll warriors of the 1960s and 1970s can lay that kind of excess on a crowd and be rewarded for it. In the current music industry, where the CD no longer has any value and the audience has been fragmented into near oblivion, few if any bands are ever going to be able to mount these sorts of shows.

      

    And they sure are not going to be doing an entire album, as did Waters and company, since the concept of the album is deader than Latin. In an age where single tracks are downloaded from iTunes, there is no place for something like Dark Side of the Moon. Gone are the days when a particular album offers a snapshot of a particular band or a specific time in our history.

      

    But, Friday night at least, the concept of the album was still alive and well and Waters united with the faithful to celebrate that fact.

   

    The first half of the concert was devoted to a wide mix of Floyd and Waters tunes, including Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Wish You Were Here, Mother, Fletcher Memorial and Leaving Beirut. The playing was outstanding from all quarters, especially saxophonist Ian Ritchie. The vocals were done mostly by committee, probably in an effort to protect the headliner a bit. But Waters, while not always as forceful as might be hoped, was usually able to rise to the occasion.
   
    In the concert’s second half, when Moon was gloriously covered from start to finish, the voices on stage did not matter. The crowd sang every word with fervent enthusiasm.

   

    Because, for this crowd, Moon is not just a collection of songs. It is a single, unified musical idea that resonates with them in a personal way. And that is what this concert was ultimately about – how an artist like Waters and an album like Moon can serve as mileposts in our lives and of our times.

It almost makes you feel sorry for the iPod/YouTube generation.   

Nothing's Missing in M.I.A.'s Set at the Palladium

Who knew there were this many M.I.A. fans in North Texas? The British female rapper of Sri Lankan descent doesn't get a lot of airplay around these parts. Her cacophonous blend of booming electro and hip-hop beats with South Asian and African rhythms punctuated by gunfire -- the whole thing often sounding like a riot in progress -- doesn't exactly fit on a playlist between Daughtry and Mary J. Blige.

But not only did M.I.A. attract a huge crowd Friday night, it was one that enthusiastically knew the lyrics to the songs on her two albums, Arular and Kala. And it was a crowd that spanned the social spectrum. Black, white, Asian, Latin, trendy, preppy, all were out in force. In fact, when M.I.A. put a call-out for ladies to come up onstage during an extremely funky 10, those who swarmed the stage looked as much as ready for a sale at NorthPark as a concert by a British cult pop figure.

Still, for all of the surface sense of noise and rhythmic anarchy, M.I.A.'s music is actually very accessible. The beats cut through, offering an anchor of groove. Backed by a DJ, a dancer, and a back-up rapper/singer, M.I.A.tore through her near-90-minute set (including an opening 15-minute set by her DJ) playing a good variety of tracks from her two CDs. Though it wouldn't have been surprising if she couldn't pull off live versions of her songs, most of the tracks actually worked better live. M.I.A. didn't offer much of a glimpse into her personality during the show but with beats as convincing as these, that didn't matter too much.

---Cary Darling

Glow in the Dark Tour: Bright lights, big stars

by Preston Jones
pjones@star-telegram.com

DALLAS -- No one could ever accuse Kanye West of taking it easy.

From his trippy albums to his lippy tirades, West is a fearless multi-genre maverick, an artist most comfortable when he's on the edge of his abilities, simultaneously pushing pop and rap forward.

During the Dallas stop of his ongoing Glow in the Dark Tour at Superpages.com Center Thursday night, West was the focal point of a furious, fantastical and fatiguing 90-minute set that married his out-sized ego with his seemingly limitless ambition. The dazzling display of smoke, flame and not a little hubris made for an evening of endless peaks -- West designed the show to be a continuous high, remarkably fat-free and lightning fast.

Pulling most heavily from his latest record, Graduation, West kicked off with the Elton John-sampling Good Morning, after setting up the concept of his show (crash landing on a faraway planet with only the company of a sultry computer named Jane). From there, his sleek, stylish set took over; it must've cost the rapper a fortune, but his stage designers should take a bow -- this was one impressive set-up. High-def screens, rapid-fire light shows and evocative video loops combined to form a non-stop sensory overload.

The highlights were many -- a poignant run-through of Hey Mama; a grimly defiant Can't Tell Me Nothing; the scorching take on Jesus Walks -- and the hiccups were non-existent. West runs an extremely tight ship, but the grin on his face as the near-capacity crowd messily roared verses of Stronger or Gold Digger belied his compulsion for perfection.

Graduation marked a modest artistic leap forward for West, as compared to its predecessor Late Registration; the touring stage show for his previous album was also a visually inventive endeavor but nothing approaching the go-for-broke bombast of this Glow in the Dark outing.

Few modern musicians could hold their own in a 20,000-seat amphitheater with nothing more than a few pricey gadgets and copious charm. Performers like Kanye West are a timeless, rare breed; a genuine artist who understands the balance between creativity and charisma, deftly extracting adoration while delivering unforgettable moments.

He's also got great taste in opening acts: Lupe Fiasco, unfortunately, was saddled with a sparse crowd, but one that warmed up toward the end of his 30-minute set. Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams, of N.E.R.D., fared much better, particularly since the amphitheater was beginning to fill up. The penultimate act, Rihanna, was far more ambulatory than her last North Texas appearance toward the end of 2007. Free to move about the stage, she ripped into her catalog with a surprisingly ferocious sexuality.

For all four acts on the bill, there was one constant (aside from quality) -- concussive, muddy sound was the only element not up to snuff for anyone. The thudding, rib-rattling bass overpowered each performer at some point, drowning out vocals and eliminating any nuance. Why the bottom-heavy sound mix wasn't tweaked to provide some sonic relief (and enjoyment) is baffling.

Preston Jones is the Star-Telegram pop music critic, 817-390-7713