Recap Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.’s shiny pop entertains

The members of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. are consummate showmen. The group members have all but ditched the NASCAR regalia they donned during performances in their formative stages, but they showed up to the Memorial Union Terrace Thursday night all decked out in coordinated shirt-and-tie combos. The set explored the ups and downs of Jr. Jr.’s debut album, It’s A Corporate World; but that title is not the fiery indictment one might assume. The tracks on Corporate World take a few laps around the same industry-friendly pop music that populates television advertisements and soundtracks for indie-conscious Hollywood endeavors without offering much of the colorful fanfare often present in the band’s wardrobes. It’s deliberate, calculated, and—perhaps as a prerequisite—forgettable.

But the key here is marketability, and that all starts with an ability to put on an entertaining live show. The trio’s stage included multiple wood-and-lightbulb cutouts of the letters “J” and “R,” and a bubble machine that managed to fill about half of the stage. The NASCAR allusions might just be a byproduct of the group’s mix-and-match pageantry, but it holds some water as a metaphor for the group: No matter how much energy goes into their marketing campaign, it takes effort to forget that they’re just driving around in a circle. 

But even if the Detroit natives’ own catalog sounded nondescript, they managed to avoid total redundancy with well-placed covers—including tracks by the Beach Boys, Gil Scott-Heron, and a stirring rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”—all of which helped to make the 22-minute set loose, dynamic, and even enjoyable. Regardless of how you feel about the superficial pretenses of corporate America, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. is doing just fine living in it.

Opener Icarus Himself played liberally from last year’s landmark Mexico EP. The abbreviated set time was enough to show off the group’s deft handle of standard-issue rock music; but it’s when the band members really free themselves—switching instruments, modifying delivery—that they sound terrific. There is something incredible inside Icarus Himself, and right now it’s probably just a matter of time until the trio figures out how to let it happen.