AJR shows it's one of music's most imaginative live acts at Milwaukee's American Family Insurance Amphitheater

Band of brothers AJR were supposed to play the 5,000-seat BMO Harris Pavilion for a summer 2020 tour.

Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Two years later, Adam, Jack and Ryan Met finally returned to Milwaukee — except the show sold so well it quickly was moved to the American Family Insurance Amphitheater, where AJR played for about 11,000 people Saturday.

Releasing their two biggest singles during the pandemic — Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit "Bang!" and “Way Less Sad," both on last year's "OK Orchestra" album — certainly helped sell tickets. But AJR has also developed a passionate fan base by addressing life’s anxieties with bombastic, Broadway-inspired pop music and playful shows.

Saturday’s set didn’t just see AJR operating on a higher level. They put on one of the most imaginative and impressive stage productions to hit Milwaukee in recent memory. (Creative director Mitchell Schellenger, who's worked with Imagine Dragons, J. Balvin and others, especially deserves a shout-out.)

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The brothers (plus touring drummer Chris Berry and touring trumpet player and keyboardist Arnetta Johnson) were practically special effects themselves, exploding with energy from the first song “Bummerland” (a spinning and leaping Jack Met especially), and never letting the energy lag, even for an accelerating acoustic jam for "World's Smallest Violin," with Berry channelling Milwaukee's Victor DeLorenzo from Violent Femmes, jamming with brushes on a snare drum.

But it was during the set's third song, "3 O'Clock Things" — with Jack Met musing on worries that keep him up at night, from politics to ongoing racism to social media overstimulation — that AJR showed their oversized ambitions. During the tune, Jack hopped on a treadmill toward the back of the stage in front of a video screen. Eight digital clones joined him on the stroll, with all of them holding up an arm to try to prevent a giant foot in a loafer from slamming down on them.

That treadmill would come in handy later when Johnson took a stroll to perform a jazzy instrumental medley touching on several AJR songs, from "Christmas in June" to their Daisy The Great collaboration "Record Player."

And there'd be more creative set pieces synchronized with video elements. Toward the end of "Ordinaryish People," Adam and Ryan Met positioned themselves behind tom drums near the big screen. In a bit clearly inspired by song collaborators Blue Man Group, digital blue paint rained down on the drums, with the brothers slamming them with sticks, the paint splattering on the screen in sync with the beats.

Then all the video screens transformed into a Jackson Pollock painting, with crew members jamming on tom drums all over the stage. Adam used a vacuum to suck up most of the colors on the screen, leaving behind a rainbow-colored ball that he bounced back and forth with Ryan on the drums.

The performance ended with a funny written message: "Intermission. Just kidding, no one wants that."

Later, for "Burn the House Down," Jack Met stepped behind a digital screen, seemingly inflating his head like a balloon by blowing into his thumb. The real Met emerged from behind the screen with a giant mascot mask over his real head, then did a bit in which he used two adjacent video screens as a transporter — throwing his sneaker, a trumpet and ultimately himself behind one screen and emerging from the other.

"Weak" was preceded by a cool replica of the trio's production process in their New York apartment, with the band adding together drums, trumpets, bass and other elements bit by bit, tweaking the elements and BPM, and ultimately adding the distorted sound of a crying baby to complete the arrangement. Ryan also performed "Joe" without the band on keys in the replica of a classroom — it's addressed to an old classmate he's lost touch with — with a champion beatboxer, Kenny Urban, sitting in a school desk, spitting by his side.

But the most impressive set piece was saved for the end during the musically boisterous, lyrically anxious "Sad."

"Well, I can't fall asleep and I'm losing my mind/'Cause it's half-past three and my brain's on fire," Jack Met sang. "I've been counting sheep but the sheep all died/And I'm not dead yet, so I guess I'll be alright."

Trumpets that seemed to be in a tank of water floated into view on the video screen behind him. But then the song suddenly stopped, and a recurring visual motif throughout the show — a big red button with the words "Do Not Push" — emerged larger than ever in front of the tank.

Met talked about being diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder about five years ago, about dealing with "intrusive irrational thoughts," and worrying about "looking weak" and not accepting when he wasn't OK through rejection and his parent's divorce.

He then symbolically learned to embrace that struggle, letting a fan push the red button. The water tank shattered, a second video screen creating the illusion of the band submerged in water, jamming on their instruments for the song's closing chorus, before the digital water drained, the video screen parted, and the real brothers emerged to take a bow, all soaked.

I have no idea how AJR can top imaginative set pieces like that one on their next tour. But I'm eager to find out.

The takeaways (including BoyWithUke’s set)

• Masked musicians have been a thing long before masked, well, everyone, and joining a lineage that includes EDM legends Daft Punk and Madison punk band Masked Intruder is BoyWithUke, AJR’s opening act Saturday. But beyond the LED mask with the big ring eyes, the anonymous up-and-comer has another gimmick with that ukulele, giving his lyrically angsty, musically slick pop a little twang. Performing alone to backing tracks, there wasn’t much to rave about his set Saturday — but he’s cracked Spotify’s top 500 artists worldwide in terms of streaming numbers, so clearly he’s on to something.

• AJR had a lot of fun bits with the crowd, grabbing a taco hat one fan had in the pit to give to Ryan Met, as a potential replacement for a favorite hat he lost on a plane three years ago. Jack Met also singled out his favorite sign, a funny and snarky poster that read “LOL Ur Nor Tyler Joseph,” a reference to the Twenty One Pilots frontman.

• Jack Met talked a bit about the band's Milwaukee concert history Saturday, how their first show was in the smallest room in the Rave, and their previous one was for 4.000 people at the Rave’s Eagles Ballroom. Met also shared how, after every tour, he and his brothers predict that they’ve just played for their largest crowds. Trust me: The crowds in Milwaukee, and beyond, are going to get bigger.

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: AJR band of brothers staged imaginative show in Milwaukee