Sean Lennon Entertainment Art Park West Chicago, Ill. December 12, 2006

Many types of faces adorned the audience, including ones that were fashioned to look like Sean’s father John Lennon, with round glasses. All the fans in the audience were thrilled to see Lennon, who entered the stage wearing large, black-framed glasses (perhaps the antithesis to his father’s small round signature ones?) and a funky old-English style suit. He introduced himself with a spot-on English accent that eventually fell away to reveal his true American speech patterns. Promoting his new album Friendly Fire, Lennon sang through some old songs as well as new. His banter with the audience was cute and he made people laugh, commenting on how “I just realized there was no Santa like a week ago. No one told me.”

Backed by drums, bass, a second guitar, and a keys player, Lennon sang “Parachute,” “Headlights,” “On Again, Off Again,” and various other tunes that a majority of the audience was able to sing along with. Lennon’s guitar skills were just as excellent as his songwriting abilities. He played through inventive solos with ease. Midway through the show, Lennon announced his battle with a throat infection, which caused his inability to sing high notes. He taught the second guitarist a treble vocal line on the stage and for one song only, they switched parts, Lennon singing backup.

Most of the songs had a dreamy, ethereal quality, yet they still managed to be robust enough to be successful both musically and lyrically. There was no encore, and during the last long, Lennon finished his lyric, and left the stage, leaving the rest of the band to finish the show alone. Lennon’s success is not a fluke and shouldn’t be attributed completely to who his family is, although certainly his heritage couldn’t have hurt, either.

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