Andrew McMahon is a rock star. You know this because the audience doesn't wait for him to come on stage before they start screaming. For them, the entrance of the artist known as Jack's Mannequin's signature baby grand piano will suffice.
The audience was something of an awkward mix, ranging from punk rawk tweens with studded bracelets to their 40-something parents who took them there in a caravan of minivans. The majority seemed to be older high school and college students who had been fans of McMahon since his Something Corporate days.
Promoting their latest album, "The Glass Passenger," Jack's Mannequin played as varied a set list as they could, considering that they've only released two LPs. The majority of the songs were from the new album, and though they still sounded a bit tentative in their novelty, McMahon's energy kept the crowd going. Unable to contain himself to the piano bench, he dashed around stage, standing at the very edge, eliciting high-pitched screams from the audience - and not just the girls.
McMahon knows that he's a rock star, he knows that he's an emo-punk sex symbol and he knows that when he climbs on top of his piano in between songs to command the audience to raise their hands and bounce them to the beat of the edgy, swaggering "Bloodshot," they're going to do it and love it. He also knows that he can do no wrong, as this moment of audience participation was followed up by an explicitly detailed story about a "ball of snot" that had been troubling him throughout several of the songs he had just performed. Though his description was a bit graphic, the joking and slightly embarrassed tone in which he told it seemed to transform the overwhelmingly energetic, sold-out show into a casual hangout among friends.
Other highlights from the new album include the breathing of life into "Annie Use Your Telescope," which on the album plays out as dragging and repetitive; live, the song served as a showcase for McMahon's vocal abilities, as he held impressively long notes over the slow, continuous groove that served as his backdrop. "Hammers and Strings" was a touching tribute to McMahon's recently retired piano that followed him and his bandmates on their first Something Corporate tour in 2002. The seven-minute-long, intensely varied narrative "Caves" was prefaced by a shout-out to the Light the Night fund, which has raised over $100,000 to support research for leukemia, the disease that McMahon famously battled for two years.
Songs from the previous album included "Holiday from Real" and "I'm Ready," both of which featured new, slowed-down introductions to give a sense of novelty to both and to throw the audience for a curve. The standard "Dark Blue" nearly sent the 9:30 club into a frenzy, as audience's screaming of the lyrics almost overpowered McMahon's voice, and the nearly seizure-inducing strobe lights produced a dizzying effect that captivated the audience and united them into a cohesive unit. "Bruised" is the album's steadfast classic, and its steady driving beat and climactic bridge made for the ideal closer.
The encore, the premise of which was regarded by McMahon as "the biggest load of shit in rock 'n' roll history," displayed impressive variation, featuring "The Resolution," one of the featured songs on "Glass Passenger." As a shout-out to his old fans, McMahon surprised the audience by playing a Something Corporate favorite, "Cavanaugh Park," a nostalgic ballad intensified by the white spotlights focused solely on McMahon and his piano.
Although the dynamic of the band made the show seem more like an Andrew McMahon showcase rather than a Jack's Mannequin concert, the focus and purpose of the band was always to be his personal outlet, bridging the gap between himself and his fans.
You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
