By Henriikka Niemi
Staff Writer
The red and black brick facade of the South Side Ballroom in Downtown Dallas greeted hundreds of enthusiastic concertgoers on Saturday for a night of good music.
The first band to take the stage was relatively unheard of; Paper Route from Nashville, Tenn. Though some of its original compositions appealed to the audience, its covers of popular songs like “Royals” were a bit disappointing. The lead singer J.T. Daly’s voice was no match for 16-year-old Lorde’s vocals and the slow tempo of its version did not do the original justice.
Paper Route left the stage after about 20 minutes with the message to “tell your friends and tell your enemies” about their new album.
Alternative rock band The Neighbourhood was met with more enthusiasm. An awkward few minutes was spent trying to figure out problems with equipment, but lead singer Jesse Rutherford kept the crowd entertained, pitting each side of the room against each other in a spontaneous cheering competition.
The band then launched into songs “Female Robbery” and “Let it Go,” which were more the crowd’s style, ending with its most well known song, “Sweater Weather.”
After much anticipation, the Imagine Dragons finally took the stage to a backdrop of flashing lights to perform songs from its album “Night Visions.”
Its opening song, “Round and Round,” is not one of its most catchy or memorable songs and was probably not the best choice to set the tune for the rest of the show. However, “Amsterdam” and “Tiptoe” soon got the crowd jumping up and down and singing along.
The next 45 minutes of the show featured a few slow songs that slightly ruined the vibe, but the band was great about making songs unique as they performed rather than exactly emulating how it sounds on their album. Drum solos by Dan Platzman or guitar solos by Wayne Sermon and Ben McKee ended each number.
Vocalist Dan Reynolds periodically pointed his mic towards the crowd, urging them to sing along. He complimented the Southern hospitality and comfort food in Dallas, even trying on his new Texas Rangers T-shirt much to the delight of the concertgoers.
Towards the end, enormous beach balls full of confetti were released to enthusiastic hands. Beating on a drum three times the size of the average person, Imagine Dragons closed with “Radioactive.” The crowd wasn’t finished when the band left the stage; after chanting “one more song” and “encore,” Platzman, Reynolds, Sermon and McKee reappeared to play “Nothing Left to Say.”
Overall, the Imagine Dragons kept up the high energy and interacted with the boisterous crowd to make for a great show.
