Check out Tam Sackman’s photo gallery from the show.
Tyler Glenn is a modern rock star.
The frontman of pop-rock band Neon Trees combines the vocal intensity of Queen and the performance antics of Michael Jackson while adding something completely original; something that can only be described as the rock star factor.
This uniqueness was evident on July 13. It was the final night of the “Pop Psychology” tour, which Neon Trees had been on since May. Anticipation ran high as fans entered 9:30 club and were assigned neon sunglasses and glowsticks, as the headlining band would be filming their music video for “Text Me in the Morning,” a single off of the “Pop Psychology” album.
The band took the stage before their openers and informed the crowd that they would be playing the song five times.
As the performance for the video that they had been filming all day repeated like a broken record, most bands would have appeared weary or bored of their own song. Though Glenn hinted at being tired of performing the song, his stage presence seemed to say otherwise. The rest of the Neon Trees — guitarist Chris Allen, bassist Branden Campbell and drummer Elaine Bradley — pulled a huge amount of weight as well, especially in keeping the environment lighthearted in between songs. The stage lit up in multicolored euphoria and confetti dispensed right as the chorus dropped. The audience, though they were dipping in enthusiasm by the fourth time around, managed to remain engaged as they finished the set before the actual set.
After they left the stage, openers Smallpools scrambled on nearly an hour late.
Its brand of electro-pop paired perfectly with the headliners, and it seemed to have brought a significant amount of fans to the venue on its own. The set, though short, covered most of their music and ended with the radio hit “Dreaming.” The boys had great on stage chemistry and joked with the crowd about using the same jokes every show. Their infectious music makes them likely candidates for stardom.
A giant white sheet sheet covered the stage for a third of Neon Trees’ opening song, “Lessons in Love” off of 2012’s “Picture Show.” When it finally dropped at the chorus, the crowd went wild.
The stage had lights not only shining on it but from it, with a giant LCD screen that played footage of the band or animations that related to whichever song they were singing. Between this and the outlandish and colorful retro outfits that the band wore, the stage was awash in splashes of color.
Almost immediately, a sweat-drenched Glenn decided to shed a chartreuse peacoat he was wearing to reveal a ‘70s-inspired disco suit. He began to increase his energy and challenged the crowd to match it.
“I just want to kiss someone,” he said, before jumping into the crowd and doing just that to an unsuspecting fan.
The rest of the night was draining in every positive sense of the word. Neon Trees’ mainstream-without-compromising-substance brand of music was infectiously danceable. By the end of the opening song, the audience had worked up a significant sweat, but showed no signs of stopping.
The set progressed with hits from all three of the band’s studio albums, including old favorites like “Animal” and “Your Surrender.”
Though Glenn is Neon Trees’ clear focal piece, the rest of the band proved to be absurdly talented entertainers as well.
Toward the end of the set, Glenn began providing significant amounts of backstory behind each song that he was performing, getting extremely personal and emotional as he alluded to mental issues and his recent struggle in coming out as a gay man to the media. As the crowd expressed their support of him and his music, he began to form tears.
The band finished its set with “Sleeping With a Friend,” the hit off of “Pop Psychology,” and exited the stage.
They returned with a two song encore of 2012’s “Everybody Talks” and this year’s “First Things First.” While Allen took the stage in a shredding guitar solo, Glenn jumped into the crowd, a look of sheer glee on his face.
As it took its final bow, Neon Trees invited the crew responsible for such a fantastic technical performance to the stage as they all celebrated an end to the tour and a temporary return to the real world.
