Deck the Hall Ball crowd loves Phoenix, Muse at Seattle's WaMu Theater

Concert review |

Of the six bands that played Deck the Hall Ball last night, Phoenix was MVP. The French quartet has been crafting subtle, soulful pop since 2000, but only recently landed on "modern rock" radio station 107.7 The End, sponsors of the annual holiday concert. If Phoenix is the future of mainstream rock, the kids are all right.

They harnessed their too-brief, 30-minute set to convincingly sell themselves to the sold-out WaMu Theater crowd of several thousand, which recognized the effort in kind. Tearing through songs like "Lasso" and "Lisztomania," both from this year's Grammy-nominated "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix," they spiked the earnest romance of Death Cab for Cutie with supercool, libidinous Parisian nonchalance. Phoenix really means it, but not in the way you think they do; their aloofness is alluring. Closing with "1901," lead singer Thomas Mars floated atop the audience to the middle of the theater, a had-to-be-there moment for everyone in the room.

L.A. alt-rockers 30 Seconds to Mars were the opposite, driving many in the crowd elsewhere during their sub-headlining slot. With a laughable sense of grandeur, they took the stage to the choral masterpiece "O, Fortuna." Bandleader Jared Leto preened in a pea coat, neckerchief, and impeccable hairdo, starting with "A Beautiful Lie" and "The Kill," lamely lacing his between-song banter with teen-baiting profanity ("OK motherf_ers, what's your favorite radio station in the whole f_ing world???"), expecting unearned adoration from a crowd he presumed was all his.

The crowd, judging by T-shirt count, clearly belonged to Muse, a British rock trio that exists because there are people born after 1987. For most of Deck the Hall Ball's audience, Styx and Queen — Muse's feather-haired, bell-bottomed dad and mom — are ancient history. Muse updated the skyward-reaching operatics of those bands with vague, postmillennial paranoia and sci-fi mysticism, songs about surveillance and black holes and fate and final battles. Their IMAX-sized themes were middlebrow Radiohead precisely executed with theatric, non-Radiohead swagger: Singer/guitarist Matthew Bellamy unabashedly dry-humped his guitar and knee-slid across the lip of the stage several times during their hourlong headlining set. There was no pandering, lyrically or otherwise, in techno-glam romps like "Time Is Running Out" and "Uprising," from this year's "The Resistance"; the music felt urgent and important. They reserved "Knights of Cydonia," the most bombastic of all (and, in YouTube-able video form, the only extant proof of Muse's sense of humor) for their smoke-machined, confetti-filled finale.

Most improved went to Vampire Weekend, the unlikeliest band in the lineup. Twenty minutes was woefully short to gain audience attention, but with their drums turned up to thundering, VW asserted strong presence via five endearing songs. Two of these — "White Sky" and "Cousins", both sweet and addictive — were from the band's upcoming sophomore album "Contra," set for release Jan. 12.

Metric's half-hour set was convincing as well — passionate, full-bore rock led by singer/guitarist/keyboardist Emily Haines. Hidden behind a blond, sweat-soaked, shaggy-dog 'do, wrapped in a tiny, silver-sequin dress, Haines was all sultry charisma and business, charging nonstop through six songs from this year's "Fantasies."

Show openers — and sole local act — Visqueen showed the good nature and enthusiasm of old pros resigned to their fate. Sound problems didn't deter frontwoman Rachel Flotard, who charged through tracks from the just-released "Message to Garcia," or her loyal following of time-tested, music savvy fans — a demographic mostly untapped by the other Deck the Hall Ball bands.

Jonathan Zwickel: zwickelicious@gmail.com