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Concert review: All the right moves from OneRepublic

By Scott Tady for The 4 min read
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Photo by Lucy Schaly of The Times

OneRepublic performs at First Niagara Pavilion on Friday.

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Photos by Lucy Schaly of The Times

OneRepublic performs at First Niagara Pavilion.

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Lucy Schaly of The Times

OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder.

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Photo by Lucy Schaly of The Times/

Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic.

BURGETTSTOWN — It was a night of pop-rock done right.

No bubblegum, no dentist’s office music — just smart and catchy songs, tightly executed, but not to the point where the emotion was drained or overwrought.

The critically underappreciated genre couldn’t have been in better hands last Friday at First Niagara Pavilion than with OneRepublic, the Script and American Authors.

More than 10,000 people turned out on a near perfect summer night, though they sounded much larger when pounding their seats and cheering for OneRepublic to return for an encore highlighted by current hit “Love Runs Out” and a lovely, well-timed cover of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”

What a wonderful voice frontman Ryan Tedder displayed for a solid 90 minutes, hitting and holding daunting high notes, though equally impressive with his smooth transitions up and down the scale. Tedder, 35, sounded particularly remarkable on “Stop and Stare,” early-set fan-fave “All the Right Moves” and “Come Home,” accompanied by fast-motion video of cars and boats traveling along the Fort Pitt and Fort Duquesne bridges and past Heinz Field.

OneRepublic didn’t go overboard with video, pyro or props, making its boldest visual statement at the very start, playing behind a big gauzy curtain as strobe lights made their silhouettes hop. The curtain dropped and the band forged on with “Light Up” as silvery blue shafts of light beamed from the instruments of lead guitarist Zach Filkins, rhythm guitarist Drew Brown and bassist Brent Kutzle.

For their next song they shared “Secrets,” which sounded classy and cool with cello and violin.

As good pop-rock bands do, OneRepublic judiciously chose moments for soloing splendor.

They let Filkins loose on a swiftly strummed Spanish-sounding acoustic instrumental that he recorded live and looped with a foot pedal, moments later doing the same with a percussive beat he created by slapping his guitar. It dropped a nice dollop of funkiness onto a surprisingly mixed-age crowd, ensuring they were standing and limbered up to dance to “Counting Stars,” the Colorado band’s 2013 crossover smash. Tedder sang latter parts of “Counting Stars” from the last row of the pavilion seats, directly in front of lawn spectators, which is becoming this year’s go-to move for singers.

Tedder demonstrated he’s a fine pianist, too, notably on the popular ballad “Apologize,” for which his piano started out bathed in fire red lighting, switching to blue the precise moment he sang about a love “turnin’ blue.” He added a few verses from Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” the hottest cover song since, well, “Counting Stars,” and before that, Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.”

Good thing OneRepublic brought its A game, because lead support act the Script raised the bar high with its lively performance.

The Dublin band hit its breaks with crisp precision, though charming singer Danny O’Donoghue was the focal point, jumping into the crowd on the first song, “Paint the Town Green.”

He’d go there again twice more, including for the hit “Hall of Fame” zig-zagging through the lower seats then sprinting toward the edge of the lawn, slapping high-fives along the way.

The band’s intelligent, plucky lyrics struck a chord. They aren’t wedding songs noted guitarist Mark Sheehan, setting up a gag where O’Donoghue searched for a front-row fan who had gone through a bitter breakup. A male fan, Brett, said he qualified and handed his cellphone to O’Donoghue, as requested.

The Script singer phoned Brett’s ex-girlfriend, who conveniently answered. O’Donoghue introduced himself, and proceeded to sing to her the breakup lament “Nothing,” finishing it by having the crowd shout an obscenity at her. It would have been great to hear the other end of the conversation.

Opening band American Authors won’t be a warmup act much longer judging by their spry 25-minute performance. A bit of banjo brought a nice toe-tapping touch to their punchy, pop/indie-rock sound. The crowd was excited to hear their hit “Best Day of My Life.”

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