Despite the drastic drop in the temperature and the pouring rain, students lined up outside of the Recreation Center on Tuesday, April 15, excited to see the long- awaited Spring Concert featuring Hoodie Allen, Karmin and Panic! At The Disco.
Hoodie Allen was the first to take the stage, with a colorful piñata banner in the background. This high-energy rapper helped thaw out the frozen and damp students.
Though a newcomer to the rapping scene, the Boston native has a nearly sold-out tour and will be releasing his first full-length album this upcoming summer.
“I’m really sort of someone who hears the music and sort of associates and writes from that,” Allen said in reference to his album. “So really just a collaborative process from just the beginning.”
According to Allen, his tour has a twist, in that it features a variety of small venues in hopes of connecting with his fan-base.
“Well, I think I just like the opportunity to play in front of a new and diverse crowd,” Allen said. “But there’s something really cool about winning over a crowd who may not be as familiar with you.”
Some songs featured in Allen’s set were “No Interruption,” “Eighteen Cool” and a song that was close to Allen’s heart, “Small Town.”
Karmin, the dynamic duo of Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan, effectively commanded the stage after Hoodie Allen’s set. The undeniable chemistry between the two certainly made for an amazing performance.
Known for their double platinum hit “Brokenheart” off of their 2012 EP “Hello,” Karmin gave an electrifying performance that definitely showed their ever-stretching ranges as artists.
“Our music live is definitely going to sound different than what people expect from us,” Heidemann said in an interview with The Signal before the show.
Their music, which usually holds a heavy electronic sound similar to that of Nicki Minaj, was stripped away from several of their songs, which showcased the group’s undeniable vocal talent.
The rather vulnerable mash-up of Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” and Karmin’s own “I Hate To Love You” was a shining moment for the pair, as the sound greatly contradicted the original online version, in a great and creative fashion.
“So we did YouTube and we broke out on YouTube,” Heidemann said. “Now people only think of us as a ‘YouTube band’ and we’re a little bit more than that.”
In late March, Karmin released their first full-length album, “Pulse,” titled after their roller-coaster journey of ascending beyond their extremely successful YouTube platform and breaking into the music industry.
“The whole idea of the album is to portray the highs and lows of life,” Heidemann said.
Aside from a few false alarms from over-excited Disco fans, the screaming commenced and the crowd surged forward the second Panic! At The Disco ran on stage.
Eccentric lead vocalist Brendon Urie — who was still recovering from celebrating his birthday the weekend prior — arrived on stage with much enthusiasm and energy with bassist Dallon Weekes and guitarist Ian Crawford.
Punk-rock vibrato echoed throughout the Rec Center with the classic opening song “Time to Dance.” The crowd heavily participated, shouting the lyrics “shotgun wedding, shotgun wedding.”
Despite the song’s lyrics, the crowd’s composure and posture was lost as they made sure to jump, clap, shout and attempt to sing along to every song, even the two surprise covers of Journey’s “Anyway You Want It” and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” at the show’s end.
Panic! played several songs from their 2005 album, “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out,” of extremely lengthy song titles, and included crowd favorite “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.”
Some of the iconic Vaudevillian classics, however, were strategically infused with the band’s new technology-based-beat featured on Panic!’s most recent album, “Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die!” (2013) with Urie manning the keyboard.
Other songs, like “Nine in the Afternoon,” remained untouched, being perfect vessels of familiarity. Unfamiliar to songs such as “This is Gospel” and “Let’s Kill Tonight,” however, was the unanticipated interjection of falsetto notes from Urie that momentarily would render the audience speechless — momentarily.
Overall, Panic! had a very clean and professional performance. Every song change was timed perfectly with intermission music playing between.
Regardless of the day’s drab weather, the electrifying Spring Concert proved to be more than worth the wait.
