New Kids on the Block @ The O2 Arena, London

New Kids On The Block at The O2 Arena Review

0/5
Bands: New Kids On The Block
Venue: The O2 Arena
Gig: New Kids on the Block @ The O2 Arena, London
Gig date: 24th January 2009
Posted on 1st February 2009 by johnbeyer

Boyzone, Take That and the Spice Girls have all done it. So why not a reunion tour by New Kids on the Block? Now in their late thirties, the boyband from Boston find themselves saddled with a spectacularly unsuitable name, but 20 years after the release of their biggest album, Hangin' Tough, their fans have demonstrated an enduring allegiance. The venue was full of women in their thirties, all suddenly wondering where their youth had gone, but intent on reliving it, if only for one night. To their credit, the band have written and recorded a new album, The Block, and, amid scenes of mild hysteria, they began with one of the songs from it — a smooth but strangely pulsating mating call entitled Single. But it wasn't until they whipped into You Got It (The Right Stuff), their first No 1 hit from 1988, that the full force of this latest exercise in pop nostalgia was unleashed. The five “Kids” — Jonathan and Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Danny Wood and Donnie Wahlberg — looked older, but still dapper, as they sang and navigated their impressively synchronised dance steps. McIntyre's syrupy falsetto dominated on Didn't I (Blow Your Mind) and Valentine Girl, while it was the more rough and ready Wahlberg who led the way through the hip-hop pop chant of Games. The love affair with their London audience was revived with some of the most sustained and shameless flattery I can remember witnessing on a concert stage. “If I can't find the girl of my dreams in London, I won't find her anywhere,” Wahlberg insisted, as he introduced Cover Girl. Whether his quest was helped by the ploy of revealing a pair of Union Jack underpants was difficult to tell. The songs remained a wholesome mixture of pop, dance and the most anodyne of R'n'B ballads, all served up with a professional twinkle in the eye. Even Dirty Dancing from the new album, which they performed with the help of a go-go dancer, was curiously straightlaced, while the occasional crotch-grabbing antics of the group just seemed faintly embarrassing. The problem with shows like this is that the core appeal of both band and music is preserved in aspic. If you weren't there first time around, seeing the Kids now is like gatecrashing somebody else's school reunion. David Sinclair

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