REVIEW: Jonas Brothers, Casey’s Center, 10.5.25

You have to hand it to Nick, Joe and Kevin — aka the Jonas Brothers — for mastering the art of recognizing what their audiences want, packaging it up, and then delivering the goods.

All the boxes are checked. Boyish good looks? Yep. Slick stage moves? Yes, sir (and ma’am). Big light show and stage, complete with a real-life replica of a bridge and gigantic cityscaped screen behind it? Sure. An 11-piece backup band and vocals? Those, too.

Oh yes, and a monster ego ramp stretching to the center of the arena.

Bada-bing, bada-bang, as they would say in Jersey, the place where the threesome grew up, honing their skills in their living room until breaking out with their debut album in 2005 on a Disney Company-owned record label, which led to a host of appearances on the Disney Channel. They were everywhere. Three stars had been born.

What the crowd of more than 10,000 witnessed Sunday night at Casey’s Center in Des Moines were those very same stars, now two decades down the line. A life that has seen them climb to the pop music apex only to fall into the trappings those ascents often bring, in their case a five-year breakup/hiatus from 2013-2018. Fortunately for their fans, the three reunited in 2019 and have been touring incessantly ever since, including bringing their “Jonas 20: Greetings From Your Hometown” tour to Iowa’s capital city to promote their new album, “Greetings From Your Hometown.”

But what about that “other” box? The actual music. Well, for those who grew up in the 2000s, it was a night of sing-along, nostalgic pop anthems. Good times. Yesteryear. For those with a few more trips around the sun? Hard to tell. The oft-used “supplemental instrumentation/vocals” playing in the background can be annoying these days. But, hey. Details, schmetails. In this day and age it’s less about the music than it is about the experience for the majority of the listening audience younger than 35. We get that.

At this show, as far as we could tell, it was kept to a minimum, thankfully. The trio opened with “Lonely,” “Love Me To Heaven,” and “Only Human,” then switched gears with “I Can’t Lose,” and the song that broke the band into the realm of superstardom, “S.O.S.”

The infectious “Sucker” drew the loudest crowd response, but just when things began to cook on all cylinders, out came the acoustic guitars and down came the light. It was Nick, Joe and Kevin and  their instruments, almost to say, “OK, for you elders out there who think we’re up here lip syncing, here you go.”

With that came a refreshingly calm, harmonic version of “Little Bird.” The three showed their flexibility by taking crowd members’ requests next, playing shortened versions of  “Don’t Throw It Away,” “Spaceman” and “705.”

“No Time To Talk,” with it’s tip of the hat to 1970s disco gods Bee Gees, came with Joe strolling the walkway holding a camera while catching crowd members shaking their stuff on the “Dance Cam.”

South Korean guitarist JinJoo Lee helped take things in a decidedly more rock direction with an amped up version of “Cake By The Ocean,” the least pop song of the night by a mile.

Things returned to form with “Jealous” from Nick’s 2014 solo album, and “What A Man Gotta Do” featuring Kevin on lead vocals.

“Year 3000” was a crowd favorite, as was “Burnin’ Up,” and “Please Be Mine,” the very first song they wrote together all those years ago.

It was seamless and smooth, with a dash of “programmed” feel every now and then. But again, to be expected.

The show closed with the encore 1-2 of “Please Be Mine,” and “When You Look Me In The Eyes,” the latter accompanied by their father, Kevin Jonas Sr., and younger brother, Franklin.

Becoming famous at a young age can a blessing and a curse. It’s great to be famous, but if you’re young, like the brothers were, it can be hard to be taken seriously as artists later in life. Sometimes the branding is permanently hindering. The Jonas Brothers know it all too well, and have seemingly navigated those waters fairly well for the most part.

All things considered, it seems the three have come out on the other side in good shape, at least where it counts — with their audience. An audience that is apparently still large, and one that still loves to dance and sing along with them on a Sunday night in the midwest.

And who can find fault with that? They saw a need are still filling it, 20 years later. More power to ’em.

Now, about that flux capacitor and people living underwater in the year 3000 ….