Backstreet Boys reboot and update their boy-band format
Sun Sentinel
By Sean Piccoli
Pop Music Writer
Before the re-activated Backstreet Boys made their entrance on Friday night, the group's manager made his. Johnny Wright, working again with his old charges after a mildly strained separation, walked on stage at Sound Advice Amphitheatre in western Palm Beach County to announce that he, too, is back.
Light applause followed. It's possible that some people in an outdoor crowd of 10,000 knew and cared about this development. Wright does have a part in the storyline: Boy-band apparatus reboots after long dormancy and seeks to integrate into a changed environment. The tour that opened on Friday in support of Never Gone, the Backstreet Boys' first album in five years, is as much a test of managerial skill as it is of entertainment strategy.
The show began with a video montage recalling earlier conquests: Shots of screaming young fans and names of far-flung countries filled a pair of large screens. The Boys -- Howie Dorough, Kevin Richardson, AJ McLean, Brian Littrell and Nick Carter -- stepped into view on a lighted ramp and sang a thumping dance track, The Call, from the previous album, 2000's Black and Blue. Right away it appeared this would be a salute to teen-pop's golden years, 1996-2001.
The two-hour performance back-tracked plenty, but all in all felt like a vote for continuity over nostalgia. The vocal quintet and a five-piece band offered up several songs from Never Gone, which resembles the old, millions-selling mix of prom pop and frothy r&b, but tinkers with the formula in places. The new ballad Incomplete -- sung late in the show with the quintet seated, unplugged-style -- grabbed a brick from Phil Spector's wall-of-sound productions by mingling high harmonies and a weighty low end trimmed with acoustic guitar strumming.
To judge by Friday's tour launch, the Backstreet Boys still do what they do about as well as they did it before they went on sabbatical. And the things they never did well still elude them: They remain perhaps the worst dancers ever to sing while executing synchronized moves, with a wind-up-and-walk obedience to routine suggesting The Wizard of Oz's munchkin troopers.
But give them a song, be it the dance-rocking Larger Than Life or the harmonizing Shape of My Heart, and the Backstreet Boys still hit their marks. They did it on Friday with ample energy but a minimum of chatter, declining to milk the occasion for meaning. If "Backstreet's back," to quote to the set's last song, it's back wearing a businessman's poker face instead of a boyish smile.