Jonases’ high-energy rockers outshine elaborate mechanics
It’s the extraneous trappings of the Jonas Brothers that both obscure and clarify their rightful place in pop music. Take away the hordes of screaming teenyboppers, the TV show, and the whiff of prefab, and you’re left with an uneven but sporadically very good pop-rock group. Put those elements back in and you’ve got the Monkees.
There are worse footsteps in which a band can walk, and last night at the TD Garden (like tonight’s concert, it was sold out), the Jonas Brothers aimed to be a well-oiled contraption. Certainly their stage set was. Built around a multitiered center and two circular wings that allowed the Jonases to perform in the round, there were many, many moving parts, including a side stage that rose approximately 25 feet into the air and a boom that allowed Joe and Kevin to raise parents’ eyebrows by spraying the crowd with water and foam.
Poor Nick was left on stage to anchor the actual song (“Live To Party’’), which was just as well. Singer Joe may be the dreamboat and guitarist Kevin may be the Shemp, but Nick solidified his status as the Jonas with the lion’s share of the talent. He switched from guitar to piano to drums (nabbing an impressive solo during “Party’’) and was the only brother to get the stage entirely to himself for a song.
Too bad it was for a medley of “Black Keys’’ and “A Little Bit Longer.’’ No matter how undimmed the audience’s affection was, ballads like those, “Turn Right,’’ and the vaguely country “When You Look Me In The Eye’’ were the group’s Achilles’ heel, diversions from the high-energy rockers that were the Jonas Brothers’ real strength.
Those were the songs that Jonas-haters ignore at their peril. The streamlined chug of “Paranoid,’’ the fast swing of “Play My Music,’’ and the surprisingly (and delightfully) nasty dis “Poison Ivy’’ all transcended the concert’s mechanical precision. The onstage rain and trampoline antics couldn’t disguise that. Nor could the screaming.
