If he seemed a bit raspy at times, that only added to the soulful quality of his performance. Simon Le Bon was in excellent voice throughout, from his soulful performance of "Paper Gods" to "The Wild Boys" and a positively gorgeous "Ordinary World," an early '90s hit that may have been the highlight of the set. A more surprising cover was "White Lines (Don't Do It)," a pioneering hip-hop single by Grandmaster Melle Mel that they managed to reinvent as something that would fit right in if played after "I Don't Want Your Love." They even played their debut single, "Planet Earth," seamlessly segueing into a heartfelt David Bowie tribute with "for here, am I sitting in a tin" as an early photo of the legend gazed upon us from the screen behind them. They returned to "Paper Gods" on more than one occasion, peppering the set with such obvious highlights of an album well worth checking out as "Last Night in the City," "What Are the Chances" and "Pressure Off." And that still left plenty of time for dusting off the greatest hits, from "Girls on Film," which closed the proper set, to "(Reach Up for the) Sunrise," which took the New Wave veterans to the top of Billboard's dance charts in 2004. Of course, it helps that part of their aesthetic all along involved embracing dance grooves and dance culture, topping the charts in the summer of 1984 with a cutting-edge remix of "The Reflex" by the great Nile Rodgers, who opened Wednesday's show with Chic and came back out to join them on "Notorious" and "Pressure Off."Īnd speaking of the cutting edge, they set the the tone for Wednesday's concert with the futuristic a cappella intro to the title track of last year's "Paper Gods," which, as I've previously noted, sounds a bit like David Bowie singing doo-wop in Berlin. We’re a modern band, a modern pop-rock band with a contemporary aesthetic. When I spoke to John Taylor in May, he said, "We’re not a blues band. As the title of one recent album framed it, "All You Need Is Now." But more importantly, they've managed to stay relevant by constantly evolving. There's a reason Duran Duran can still headline a venue as massive as Gila River Arena decades down the road from "Rio" when so many of the best of their contemporaries find themselves reduced to doing package tours on the nostalgia circuit.
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