Walk the Moon from Ohio brought their energetic, danceable music to the Commodore Ballroom on March 22 as part of their Talking is Hard tour, and showed us all why it’s sometimes important to just shut up and dance.
With colourful neon lights, red-streaked hair, and plenty of synth, the show felt like an ’80s throwback — in a good way. I also really enjoyed lead singer Nicholas Petricca’s relaxed performance style. Their entrance song as they took the stage was The Lion King’s “The Circle of Life,” and it set a peaceful mood that remained throughout their set. Their stage presence and Petricca’s carefree dancing also exuded positive energy that crossed over to the crowd.
Petricca must be into yoga or some other relaxing hobby. At one point, he asked the crowd to take a few deep breaths with him, and also did a group activity where he had us pull in all the “bullshit” and things that make us angry, tired, or sad, and pull all that stuff up and out through our fingertips to let it go.
Honestly, I think more bands should employ yoga techniques in their stage show. It focused the audience and loosened us up to dance without a care in the world.
On “Different Colors,” the band showed off some great electric guitar riffs, and reverbed into the very catchy “Tightrope.” The ’80s synth vibe continued for their fist-pumping, anthemic “Down in the Dumps.”
The band also showed their range with higher-pitched, echoing voices paired with chilling synth, while “Up 2 U” had a much heavier sound with hard rock influences.
Petricca described the song “Avalanche” as “a song about taking life by the balls.” This track is incredibly catchy, and reminds me a lot of Athlete’s “Superhuman Touch,” perhaps because it evokes the same inexplicably cosmic, uplifting feeling.
The empowerment continued as Petricca got the crowd to jump in unison with “Jenny” and put our hands up to “I Can Lift a Car.”
They saved “Shut Up and Dance” as their last song before the encore, and came back to do a surprisingly great cover of The Killers’ “All These Things that I’ve Done.” It was a treat to sing “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier” with the enthusiastic crowd.
I think “Anna Sun” is still their best-known song, so it makes sense that it was their final song of the night, allowing some of their bright, energetic attitude to stay with us long after the show was over.
