Daughtry’s Break The Spell Tour – REVIEW

On Daughtry’s Break the Spell tour with SafetySuit, they gave a performance in Moline, Illinois at the I-Wireless Center. You can check out our review after the break!

Daughtry, along with opening act SafetySuit, performed at the i-wireless Center in Moline, IL on Friday, March 9. Now I must admit, I haven’t really ever gotten into Daughtry before with the exception of a few of their single. However, SafetySuit is one of my favorite bands at the moment, so I definitely had to make it out to this concert. Plus, Daughtry is one of those bands that has so many big singles, it’s a given that you’ll know at least half of the songs in their set because you exist, so I knew Daughtry would be worth it.

Safetysuit started out their set with my favorite song on their new album, “Believe”. The drawn out, ambient intro, complete with purple lighting, set the mood for the beginning of the show. However, when the band’s vocalist, Doug Brown, finally made his way on stage to begin the first verse, the microphone wasn’t functioning at all. The crew was finally able to get the microphone working after nearly the entire first verse was over, which effectively ruined the dramatic impact that the introduction was supposed to have. Furthermore, Doug seemed to struggle a bit with the technical vocal lines in this tune, so at this point, I was pretty worried about how the rest of the set would turn out.

As it turns out, however, I had nothing to worry about. Doug wielded a guitar of his own on the second song of the set, which was “Something I Said” from the band’s debut album, and the band sounded awesome. The vocals were great, and although the band as a whole has some pretty peculiar moves on stage, they helped to energize a seemingly hesitant audience, and the energy stuck around through the entire set. Furthermore, Doug is an energetic, and sometimes sporadic, front man. Although he seemed a bit strange sometimes with his stage moves, he did a phenomenal job of making the band’s typically relaxed music captivating, and frankly, the crowd was really digging it. The band also had some great interactions with the crowd. The vocalist would often leave the stage and stand with the front row while performing. Also, there was a point in the set in which Doug took a camera from a girl in the front row, and started taking pictures of the band and crowd from the stage while singing. Maneuvers like this every night will surely help build some lifelong fans, as well as help get the band’s name out there a bit more once the pictures make their rounds on Facebook.

Other highlights from the set were the band’s most popular song, “Stay,” a very original cover of “Hallelujah,” and the band’s new single entitled “These Times.” The final song in the set was “Apology,” which was fitting since it’s arguably the most upbeat song the band has, and the crowd even stood up and jumped around a bit. Overall, the approximately forty five minute set was really solid, and I was more than pleased.

Now although I’m unfamiliar with many Daughtry songs, the band has sold millions of albums, and is right up there with Nickelback when it comes to dominating the mainstream rock/pop stations over the past several years, so I was very excited to see what the band had tooffer live. The band’s first song was “Renegade,” off of their new album “Break the Spell.” There was no dramatic entrance from the group, they just walked on stage and more or less stayed in place while performing the opening tune. Break the Spell hasn’t been doing as well as Daughtry’s previous albums and it was clear that the crowd wasn’t all that crazy about this opening tune. Because of this, I was surprised when five of the band’s first six tunes were off of Break the Spell. There wasn’t much excitement to be felt in the building, and by this time, everyone but those on the floor had returned to sitting. To make matters worse, the sound wasn’t all that great, and Chris’s vocals were not easy to make out. Luckily, however, the seventh and eighth songs of the set were acoustic versions of the smash hits “What About Now” and “Home,” and were performed solely by Chris Daughtry. The sound was great for the acoustic songs, and the intimacy of this portion of the performance went over really well with the audience. Everyone was singing, out of their seats, and standing. At this point, Chris shared that he was under the weather, which explained his less enthusiasticly character performance for the majority of the band’s set.

After the two songs were over, the rest of the band came back out. The second half of the set featured far fewer songs from Break the Spell. The crowd was noticeably more excited. Highlights from the second half were “Over You,” and the band’s encore, which consisted of the song “It’s Not Over.” The crowd erupted during these tunes. Despite Chris being sick, he sounded good from what I could hear. However, if he had played the entire set acoustically, I think I would have been really happy with the show

Information about the review…
Tour: Daughtry’s Break The Spell Tour
Bands: Daughtry and SafetySuit
Reviewer: Landen Boyer
Date: March 9, 2012
Venue: i-wireless Center in Moline, IL