Taking Back Sunday

The threat of torrential rains and flash floods couldn’t stop Taking Back Sunday and Angels and Airwaves from rolling through the Tweeter Center in Mansfield on Saturday. Originally planned as a parking lot show (a la the Warped Tour) it was moved inside the compound to keep the majority dry. Not everybody made it, though. Tourmates Head Automatica went missing from the night’s lineup, apparently due to a suspected flare up of Daryl Palumbo’s Chron’s disease. ("Daryl is sick" was the only information the band gave out; his battle with Chron’s has been well-documented.) In lieu of Head, the crowd was given the pleasure of a longer set by the Subways -- one riddled with technical difficulties, apologies for the rainy weather, and unintelligible British banter.

Boston’s second view of Angels and Airwaves, the new project from Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge, was set on a much grander stage than the one the group played at Avalon a few weeks ago. Their peformance played out much like their debut album, We Don’t Need To Whisper: lots of samples, DeLonge’s voice filtered through robotic reverb, a back-up vocal track. The stage was lit up like a space station ready for liftoff to match the music’s desolate mood (see their U2-goes-to-Mars video for "The Adventure ", with different backdrops dropping in for the album’s subtle shifts in tone. In case you hadn’t got the memo, DeLonge’s message was bright as a supernova: anyone looking for the child-like honesty and spunk of Blink-182 is to be left behind. DeLonge tried to snap the all-grown-up vibe by slipping a penis joke into the middle of the set, but his more-than-a-feeling seriousness was already locked in. Efforts to connect with the crowd by walking through the audience with a spotlight and a wireless mic, surrounded by security beefcake, came off as cheesy. If you wanted a re-enactment of the A&A CD, you got it; some of us wanted a live show, and what we got, mostly, was a flashlight in the eyes.

What the synthetic, bass-y drone of A&A couldn’t provide, Taking Back Sunday took care of within a matter of moments of ripping into "What It Feels Like to be a Ghost," from their new Louder Now. They appeared from behind a curtain, in their black-on-black suits looking like the Hives reincarnated, snapping the crowd from the comatose state the dreary night and the drearier opening acts had left them in. It wasn’t so long ago that Adam Lazzara’s little band from Long Island was opening for Piebald at Axis, and it’s still shocking to think of them as stadium stars. "Home is where you make it," they sang at one point; amazingly, they’ve grown their natural enthusiasm from clubs to sheds without giving up what made them special. The dynamic between TBS’s eccentric singer and his audience is still preacher-to-choir -- it’s just a much bigger choir. In the gaps when the mic hurtling towards Lazzara’s face didn’t quite make it in time, the voices of 15,000 teens and preteens filled in. Three albums in, they know their sound and they’re sticking to it: they know exactly where they want to be. And if the songs off 2002’s Tell All You Friends got the crowd the most amped, so be it: suddenly, during "You’re So Last Summer," the pit section down front erupted into a sea of finger-pointing, with bodies floating on top. Although the fear of getting hit by Lazzara’s trademark swinging microphone is gone, the intimate feeling you got seeing them on smaller stages is not.

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