Jonas Brothers Review

Jonas Brothers celebrate RodeoHouston return by setting new attendance record

The band broke the mark set by Los Tigres Del Norte on Sunday.

Fifteen years after their last appearance as teen stars, the now fully-grown up Jonas Brothers – Kevin, Joe, and Nick – conquered their second headlining perfromance at RodeoHouston on Friday, March 15 by setting an all-time attendance record with 75,600 fans.

The night’s show made the case that pop groups can get better with age via an exciting mix of hit singles from their songbook over the course of their 75-minute show. While the trio operates in the same space as other pop-rock acts like Maroon 5 or OneRepublic, their Disney star past meant that their fans have grown up with them.

They now have a nearly two decades of hits – including five Billboard top five albums — to pull from, and those years of experience paid off on the star-shaped stage. They seemingly knew exactly what their audience wanted with a set that had nothing but smashes. In reality, they could have played the birthday song 12 times, and it still would have been the loudest show of the year.

Before they launched Jonas Brothers 2.0 in 2019, the group took a long hiatus that allowed the three brothers to branch out into solo careers, side-projects, acting in movies (most notably Nick in a star-making turn in Jumanji), TV shows, and more. So with the release of the comeback No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 single, “Sucker,” in 2019, they’d gained a multitude of new fans, mostly the children of the suburban women who had their posters on their bedroom walls back in the early-2000s. Plenty of tabloid fodder that came from marriages to famous actresses and an impending divorce surely didn't hurt their visibility.

Several sold-out arena tours under their belt (including two huge shows at Toyota Center last year), and a couple of actually good comeback records were the cherry on top, making the Jo-Bros one of the biggest bands in the pop world. They were an excellent choice to play RodeoHouston on the Friday that falls on spring break for many Houston students. The fact that they shattered the all-time attendance record almost shouldn't be a surprise.

The Jonas Brothers were sneakily talented, at ease on stage playing with each other, and they appeared to be having a good time. They are also extremely tight musicians, coming in hot from the middle of their 90-date “The Tour” world tour, a setlist comprised of songs from across their career, much like Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. A backing band featuring solid professionals playing brass, strings, keyboard, and drums took their sound to the next level.

Unfortunately, with RodeoHouston’s time constraints, the trio could only perform 14 songs, but they didn’t miss when they condensed their usual 33-song setlist.

Opener “Celebrate!” from their latest album, The Album, harkened back to ‘70s funk groups like Earth, Wind and Fire, Joe taking lead singer duties, dressed in a pink and black western shirt, leather pants and black cowboy hat.

The 2020 single, “What a Man Gotta Do,” featured vocal trade-offs between Joe and Nick, the latter dressed in a red shirt and jeans pulling electric guitar duties, while Kevin played acoustic guitar dressed handsomely in full blue denim. The song elicited a cacophony of screams that assured some form of hearing loss for all those in the seats. “Waffle House” from 2023’s The Album kept the decibels high.

“We had a few incredible stops in Houston, but this is next level,” Nick said, addressing the youthful, mostly female throng. “We usually play for a few hours, but we have to play the highlights tonight. That said, we think it’s important to bring it back to where it started — how many OG Jonas Brothers fans are in the house?"

That drew what might have been the loudest cheers of the entire RodeoHouston season before kicking into the 2007 smash, “S.O.S,” from their self-titled second album. The brothers all joined in on vocals for the best performance of the night so far.

“Cool,” from 2019 comeback album, Happiness Begins, brought a sugary rush with an undeniable chorus. The one-two acoustic ballad punch of Joe's “Gotta Find You" from mouse-house flick, Camp Rock, and Nick's "Introducing Me” from Camp Rock 2 slowed things down, the singalong nearly drowning out the singers on stage. Follow-up “Play My Music” was one of the most upbeat numbers of the night.

“For a big part of our life we spent time in Texas,” Joe said, alluding to their youth spent in Westlake, near Austin. "We actually wrote this next one with our dad.”

“When You Look Me in the Eyes” brought out thousands of cellphone flashlights, one of the closest country music-sounding songs so far. The emo-pop tune and top 40 hit, “Year 3000” — actually from the year 2007 and quite obviously a song of their youth — was a Blink-182 song if that band were more earnest and wholesome. A contagious, stadium-wide, round of clapping broke out.

“Jealous”, the No. 7-charting Nick solo song allowed for him to take the spotlight in a brown cowboy hat, his high-octave vocal prowess on full display. He took a bow and a hat-tip and deserved it.

Joe commandeered the stage next with the excellent “Cake by the Ocean." The No. 9 hit by his side-project DNCE allowed that band’s guitarist, JinJoo Lee, a moment to shine, utilizing the stage starpoints to make sure the entire venue felt like they were a part of the party. The song ended with a wicked Lee guitar solo.

And no headliner can go wrong with a cover of “Friends In Low Places" by the highest-selling country artist in history and multi-time RodeoHouston headliner, Garth Brooks. While not the strongest executed performance of the night — they admitted they were still learning the song — it united the entire audience. Dads who brought their daughters to the show were thankful that they actually recognized one.

“Lovebug” was an epic rush, before going headlong into the biggest song of the night in “Burnin’ Up,” the top five single from the record, A Little Bit Longer. “Only Human," the other huge hit from their 2019 comeback album, Happiness Begins, kept the energy at 11, the bangers seemingly endless.

“Sucker,” the No. 1 hit comeback single from that same album sounded as good as it did when it was released, with some impressive whistling by Joe, the women in the crowd audibly expressing their approval. And finally, the ballad “Leave Before You Love Me” served as the easy comedown— melodic hints of Wham’s melancholic-sweetener, “Last Christmas.”

With that, the brothers hopped onto the back of a pick-up truck as the announcer notified us we were all a part of RodeoHouston history. While previous 2024 RodeoHouston shows leaned definitively towards the adult side, the now seasoned pros reminded us that family friendly headliners can still fill the building.

It'd be a shame to make us wait another 15 years to get the Jonas Brothers back to RodeoHouston.

Setlist
Celebrate!
What a Man Gotta Do
Waffle House
S.O.S
Cool
Play My Music
When You Look Me in the Eyes
Year 3000
Jealous
Cake By the Ocean
Friends in Low Places
Lovebug
Only Human
Sucker
Love Me Before You Leave Me

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Movie Review

New horror movie Faces of Death puts a modern twist on cult classic

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy — in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks — is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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