Ed Masley

The Republic | azcentral.com

For a group of Australians who cracked the American market on a tour with U.K. heartthrobs One Direction, 5 Seconds of Summer couldn’t stop talking about the special role Ak-Chin Pavilion in Phoenix has played in the story of their lives thus far.

It’s where they launched their first headlining tour of U.S. amphitheaters – their graduation to the big leagues at an age where most musicians are just lucky to be graduating high school.

And they rocked that old familiar stage like seasoned veterans, pausing frequently to interact with their adoring fans, who seemed to know the words to every song and greeted every song, word and/or gesture with just-shy-of-deafening shrieks of approval. It was like the very early days of Beatlemania. With louder amps.

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Those screams came close to drowning out Luke Hemmings’ vocal when he first stepped to the mike to begin the proceedings with an understated “Carry On.” Much later, Michael Clifford did a brilliant job of letting the enthusiasm of their fans become the show as he stood there, backlit in his Ozzy Osbourne jersey, and milked their applause by simply waiting for the screams to die down, knowing that they wouldn’t.

At one point, coming out of "Girls Talk Boys," a beaming Clifford earned a huge response for saying, “Don’t tell any of the other shows that we played to on this tour, but I have a feeling that Phoenix, Arizona, you might be my favorite place to play in the entire world.”

They’ve added a second album – the chart-topping “Sounds Good Feels Good” – and a funky new “Ghostbusters” single (“Girls Talk Boys”) to the set list since that first headlining tour, expanding the scope their sound – a catchy blend of power-pop, hard rock and post-Green Day pop-punk with the occasional power ballad thrown in.

It’s a winning combination and they’ve done as much as any act in recent memory to pass the torch for rock and roll to a new generation of fans – the same fans they've had singing along to their spirited cover of “What I Like About You” by the Romantics since that One Direction tour.

The set list touched on all the songs a fan could hope to hear, bringing the set to a triumphant close with an audience singalong on their first hit, “She Looks So Perfect,” coming out of the second album’s biggest hit, “She’s Kinda Hot,” and that Romantics song I mentioned earlier, which in turn had been preceded by the Green Day-flavored “Permanent Vacation.”

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That was quite the raucous ending, but the emotional core of a 5SOS show remains “Amnesia,” a tender ballad that turned into another massive singalong on the desperate chorus hook, "I wish that I could wake up with amnesia / And forget about the stupid little things / Like the way it felt to fall asleep next to you / And the memories I never can escape."

The overall thrust of the show, though, was less about memories you'd like to escape and more about the kind you hope will last forever. As Clifford told the crowd at one point, "I am going to assume that everyone came here tonight to have the best night of their lives 'cause why else would you come to a 5 Seconds of Summer concert?" And judging from the audience reaction to his comments, there's no reason to believe it didn't feel at least a little like the best night many of those fans had ever had.