Boys deliver spectacular stage show
By Noel Gallagher
September 12, 2005
London Free Press

The Backstreet Boys have hit the road they hope returns them to superstardom after a four-year absence from the pop music scene.

Apparently, the former teen idols were sorely missed by more than 8,000 of their local and very loud fans -- mostly females in the adolescent-to-early 20s demographic -- who packed the John Labatt Centre last night.

Leaders of the boy-band wave that ruled the second half of the 1990s, the Florida quintet sold 73 million albums world-wide before fading from public view in 2001.

They're currently on the Canadian leg of a globe-trotting tour promoting the Boys' new, chart-climbing CD with the embedded message title, Never Gone.

Their concert was kicked off by The Call, which elicited a wall of screaming sound from the adoring throng. And for the next 110 minutes, the JLC went Backstreet Boy crazy.

As in the band's first go-round, the title of the fans' favourite Backstreeter remains a two-Boy contest between dark, brooding A.J. McLean and sunshine blond Nick Carter.

Judging by last night's crowd response, the edge still belongs to Carter, at 25 the band's youngest member, whose resume lists some brushes with the law and a short, stormy romance with TV reality show star Paris Hilton.

The group, which also includes elder statesman Kevin Richardson, 33, Brian Littrell and Howie Dorough, did Climbing the Walls, I Still . . . and other offerings in the Never Gone collection, released in June.

But the audience reserved their most frenzied responses for Backstreet "golden oldies," the likes of More Than That, Shape of My Heart, Larger Than Life, As Long As You Love Me and I'll Never Break Your Heart.

Choreography continues to be a key element of the "Backstreet style," though these guys may soon be a tad too old for the cute jumping and spinning routines that were the group's signature.

Their busy stage show also produced thunderous pyrotechnics, stage smoke, a laser beam spectacle, comic touches, multiple costume changes and various video clips recalling the band's heady history.

Some critics have disdained the Backstreet Boys' music as too smarmy and sweet.

One reviewer even hung the negative label Prefab Five on the squeaky clean group with the slickly hyped image.

But you can't argue with popular success and cynics' complaints would have been drowned out by last night's noisy gathering of the Boys' faithful supporters.

Clearly, they enjoyed taking a lively jaunt down recent memory lane with their heroes, during a 20-number concert list ended by Drowning and Quit Playing Games (With My Heart).

Backed by Richardson on piano, the group's encore package featured Incomplete, the aptly named Backstreet's Back and Weird World. The latter, mulling the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, proved to be both timely and moving.

Preceding BSB to the Labatt Centre spotlight were the Click Five, a suit-wearing Boston band that did selections off Greetings from Imbrie House. It's their debut album of pop-rock ditties that retroactivates tunes from the 1980s.

Kaci Brown, a 17-year-old former Little Miss Texas Grand Talent winner, launched the evening with her set of slightly lovesick songs spiced up by a few rocky edges.

She and the Click Five did what opening acts are assigned to do -- provide passable entertainment that doesn't upstage the headliners.

Not that anyone could have challenged the love-in sparked between the fans and those comeback kids, the Backstreet Boys.