Concert Reviews

Despite a musically strong show, there was a disconnect between Neon Trees and the crowd on Monday night.

Neon Trees, with Hush Club and Twin Shadow, at House of Blues, Boston, Oct. 27, 2025.

Boston fans may have wished there was just a little bit more meat to Neon Trees’ final show of their Sink Your Teeth Tour. 

The Utah-based group grew to fame with the release of “Everybody Talks” in 2011, which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard charts. Now, the band is touring for their fifth album “Sink Your Teeth,” which was released in September 2024.

“We haven’t played Boston in a long f—ing time,” lead singer Tyler Glenn announced to the House of Blues crowd. The band last played in Boston in 2015 at the Paradise Rock Club on their “A Night Out With Neon Trees” North American Tour. 

“It’s almost more astonishing that new people come every time,” he added. 

Between songs, Glenn posed and waited for the crowd’s applause to grow louder, which grew old quickly for the approximately 400 audience members. 

In front of a vampire teeth logo, Neon Trees started strong with performances of “Skeleton Boy” and “Teenager in Love” that prompted headbanging and dancing from the audience, although neither song is from their latest album. 

“Are you ready to hear 90 minutes of really sad f—ing pop music?” Glenn asked — prompting an eruption of cheering — and then threw his sunglasses into the pit. 

The crowd screamed the lyrics to “Animal,” the band’s second most popular song, as Glenn made phallic hand gestures. 

For “1983,” Glenn led the audience in joining in on the “Ooos” throughout the song. “I want to have fun with you,” he said, noting he gets as much out of the show as the audience does. 

While the other three band members and an additional guitarist were glued to their instruments, Glenn danced, jumped, and hopped on the tips of his toes all over the stage. However, he had minimal interaction with the audience and waited in silence between songs. 

Before singing “Secret,” Glenn spoke about how he lived with a secret for 30 years before coming out as gay 11 years ago. In the middle of the song, he sang the chorus of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste,” the theme of which is seemingly unrelated to that of “Secret.”

Later in the show, he also sang the chorus to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” during his performance of “Sleeping With a Friend.” Although both added verses were unlike the band’s songs, the audience sang and danced along to the familiar choruses. 

Glenn knelt in front of his microphone stand and raised his hands in prayer at the end of “Heaven,” eliciting at least a few looks of confusion from the audience. 

Moving from “Heaven” to hell, the audience applauded as Glenn said, “Hey Boston, F— I.C.E,” before performing “El Diablo.” Red, white, and blue lights flashed throughout the song and some audience members joined Glenn in holding their middle fingers in the air. 

Neon Trees’ performance was more electric than on their studio recordings, and Glenn’s vocals were strong, except for when his voice cracked during the first encore song, “Losing My Head.”

Anticipating “Everybody Talks” being the final song, the audience was itching to hear the iconic “Ahhh” beginning. 

Instead, the second encore song was a cover of “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League. Although the crowd animatedly sang along, the cover seemed out of place from the rest of the set. 

Glenn began the band’s biggest hit with a non-traditional, slow rendition of the lyrics while strobes lights danced across the stage. Finally, the band played the highly anticipated “Everybody Talks,” but abruptly left it to the audience to sing one of the choruses without any instrumental backup. 

Neon Trees put on a musically strong show and the audience certainly appreciated much of the “sad” pop music. But a stronger connection with the crowd would have pushed the band’s performance over the top, and it just didn’t quite materialize.

That wasn’t the case for the band’s openers, Hush Club and Twin Shadow. 

Somerville’s own Hush Club is known to host their fans at their apartment and take their audiences out for ice cream and pizza. While there was no afterparty to this show, Hush Club quickly built a relationship with the audience through their lyrics mentioning the Fenway lights, and even taking a picture with the crowd. 

The band taught the audience the melodies of two of their songs and the crowd continued singing along for the band’s cover of Calum Scott’s “Dancing On My Own.”

Following Hush Club, Twin Shadow — who is based in LA, but said his music career started in Boston — brought strong beats to the stage. 

He stunned the crowd by throwing his guitar after one of the strings broke, letting it crash onto the stage. “I didn’t mean to shock you with the guitar throw. It had it coming,” he said, noting the strings lasted for the other five tour stops.

Setlist for Neon Trees at House of Blues Boston, Oct. 27, 2025

• Skeleton Boy
• Teenager in Love
• Moving in the Dark
• Animal
• 1983
• Nights
• Used to Like
• Songs I Can’t Listen To
• Recover
• Secret
• Bad Dreams
• Heaven
• El Diablo
• Lessons in Love (All Day All Night)
• Paper Cuts
• Sleeping with a Friend
• New Best Friend

Encore

• Losing My Head
• Don’t You Want Me (Cover)
• Everybody Talks

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