The pit inside Newport Music Hall was fit to bust when Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness took the stage just after nine o’clock on Wednesday night. Seated at a grand piano adorned with an astronaut’s helmet and a cityscape diorama – a nod to the cover art of the band’s latest album Zombies On Broadway – McMahon launched into their most recent single “Fire Escape.”
McMahon’s compositions favor big, singable choruses and supernatant melodies, and his youthful tenor capably propels them to the ceiling. You couldn’t help but feel elevated by “Canyon Moon,” “Walking In My Sleep,” and “High Dive,” and his audience agreed with arms waving, cell phone cameras pointed up, and voices belting. McMahon was clearly enjoying himself as well, his tall frame bouncing across the stage and on top of his piano when he wasn’t in his default position behind his signature keys. During “Don’t Speak to Me (True),” he surfed across the crowd in an oversized inflatable yellow duck for a few bars.
The show was unmistakably engineered for fun, but McMahon’s well-crafted music remained the centerpiece.
Other highlights included a faithful reading of his excellent 2015 radio hit “High Dive,” “Dark Blue” (a standard from the catalog of McMahon’s former outfit Jack’s Mannequin), and a gorgeous cover of Empire of the Sun’s “Walking on a Dream.”
The band’s current Zombies In America tour is scheduled to finish in August after several dates across the US and the UK. McMahon will also open for his musical idol, Billy Joel, at shows in Cleveland and Green Bay this summer.
Zombies In America is also benefiting McMahon’s charity, the Dear Jack Foundation, which was founded in 2006 following his diagnosis of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. His fight with and eventual recovery from the disease was the subject of a 2009 documentary of the same name. The Dear Jack Foundation supports initiatives and provides programming in order to promote positive health outcomes for adolescents and young adults, ages 15-39, from the moment they are diagnosed with cancer through survivorship. More information on how fans can make a donation and get involved is available on the foundation’s official website.