Danny Elfman ditched his new wave roots for industrial grind, and showed Detroit his thirty-year hiatus from touring was well worth the wait.
You may know him as the frontman for the hit 1980s new wave band Oingo Boingo. Or maybe as the Oscar-nominated musical genius who composed and scored tracks for hit movies and shows like Beetlejuice, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Good Will Hunting, The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, and nearly 100 more over a career spanning 50 years.
Danny Elfman has done a few one-off festival performances in recent years, but his stop at The Fox Theatre was only the second show of his first actual tour with a band since 1995 – and it absolutely rocked. How could it not, given an all-star backing that included guitarists Nili Brosh from Dethklok, Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle bassist Matt McJunkins, and Josh Freese, who has drummed with everyone from Devo and Guns N Roses to Foo Fighters. Putting a supergroup like this together meant that Elfman was never going to just replay nostalgic Oingo Boingo hits or film scores. That would have been a waste of the overwhelming talent on stage. Instead, songs from the ’80s new-wave era were rebuilt in a more industrial metal style.
The set kicked off with “Sorry” from Elman’s 2021 album Big Mess, with Frinck crouched close to his amp to draw out a long distortion while Freese laid out a thunderous rhythm before a shirtless Elman joined the stage, showing that age is just a number. That was followed by Boingo classics “Insects” and “Nothing to Fear (But Fear Itself),” both of which came out sounding like they’d been born a decade later and a genre over. The sonic reinterpretation ran throughout the night, with Oingo tracks like “Ain’t This The Life” and “On The Outside” trading their new wave brightness for a much heavier grind. Most of the show fluctuated between Oingo classics and tracks from Elfman’s 2021 solo record Big Mess, which didn’t need the same makeover since they were written with exactly this sound in mind.
Elfman also gave fans a taste of his newest work, saying, “I’m going to make you all a guinea pig and experiment on your brains,” before playing his latest song “Sayonara.” It’s a hard-driving song where McJunkins’ punchy bassline and Freese’s drumming had heads nodding along.
Another standout of the night was the one and only piece of Elfman’s film work that made the set: a metal version of “This Is Halloween,” which Elfman played in a Jack Skellington-style jacket.
The 80-minute, 20-song set closed with Boingo classics “Only a Lad” and “No One Lives Forever,” followed by an encore of “Who Do You Want to Be.” Thirty years after Elfman last toured for a living, the songs didn’t sound preserved and replayed. They were rebuilt and renewed.
Elfman’s tour runs through October, and he expects a new album out around the same time, so hopefully that means fans will have even more opportunities to catch him in the future.
DANNY ELFMAN
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