‘N Sync’s Show Takes Kitchen-Sink Approach

“This is the biggest album-release party I’ve ever seen!” exclaimed ‘N Sync’s Joey Fatone from his perch amid the thousands and thousands of fans at the Rose Bowl on Tuesday, the same day the superstar pop group’s new collection, the aptly titled “Celebrity,” arrived in stores.

Many of the screaming faithful in that roiling sea of green, amber, blue and pink glow stick lights had already memorized the quintet’s latest single, “Pop.”

With its up-to-date percussive oomph and self-referential smugness, the tune provided the theme for the vast spectacle of costume changes, video skits, pyrotechnic dance numbers, fan-letter readings and--oh, yeah!--songs that propelled Fatone and fellow singing-dancing idols Justin Timberlake, J.C. Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick and Lance Bass.

Yet not even 90 dizzying minutes of sound and fury fully disguised the whole lotta nothin’ at the core of their hip dance-pop, sweet love ballads and feather-light soul.

“This must be pop,” they sang, baring their bright white teeth with determined perkiness. Well, duh.

Even as the media jackals breathlessly await the band’s inevitable demise, ‘N Sync is still stubbornly riding high. The group is in little danger of being dethroned at the moment, considering that this PopOdyssey tour is among the summer’s top concert draws.

Nevertheless, the sheer grandiosity of it all felt a teensy bit desperate. The towering steel stage resembled a giant Transformers toy, with its banks of lights, fold-down ramp and three-pronged scaffolding capping a trio of giant video screens. Tucked safely away in a tidy slot beneath the central screen, the backing band provided the soundtrack with unobtrusive precision.

Dressed like refugees from “Rent,” the lads emerged from a pod on the small island in midfield, which connected by catwalk to the main stage. They whipped the mostly young crowd into a frenzy with talk about their “dirty pop,” but the show was about as sexy as the “New Mickey Mouse Club” episodes in which principal songwriters Timberlake and Chasez cut their performing teeth.

Despite the overly long video segments that allowed much-needed breathers between energetic production numbers, things were never dull for long.

How could they be, with such surreal bits as the members mounting silver, red-eyed mechanical bulls after flying through the air during the sublimely ridiculous “Space Cowboy (Yippie-Yi-Yay),” dressing up like silent-movie actors for the new heartbreak tune “Gone,” or literally being raised up on pedestals during a snippet of “God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You”?

Yet the nonstop activity also kept anyone not predisposed to love the group from seeing much personality. It would be hard for anyone to seem real at the core of so much machinery, but the members actually did manage genuine humanity during the close harmonizing of such romantic moments as “This I Promise You.”

This was a pleasant surprise, given the arrogance behind such new numbers as “Celebrity,” but it didn’t make the whole “We are pop” message any easier to swallow.

The more ‘N Sync tried to make itself the epitome of what is, by nature, ephemeral, the clearer it became that the group was nothing more than the latest in a long line of good examples.