KROQ’s acoustic fete gets off to a fresh start

For KROQ-FM, its annual Almost Acoustic Christmas concerts are the big event of the year, a source of endless promotion and audience-bonding. For fans of the radio station, it’s an extravagant night of top-tier acts. And for scholars on the subject, it serves as a succinct summary of the state of modern rock.

By the last measure, the opening night of the annual staging on Saturday at the Universal Amphitheatre had the feel of a coming-out party for a new era, or at least a refreshing break from business as usual. In the past, the hot newcomers were usually joined by the station’s established breadwinners, but Saturday’s six-hour-plus show featured bands that, with a few exceptions, have made their first records and hit the airwaves in just the past couple of years.

And they’ve done it with a sound and attitude that break the hold of the heavy, ponderous rock that created a drab Dark Ages a few years ago. They’re reinventing and freshening rock’s basic vocabulary and rediscovering its sense of fun and style. (Sunday’s show, which will be reviewed Tuesday, gathered some of the heavier and older bands, such as Green Day and Social Distortion, which played the first KROQ Christmas show 15 years ago.)

If one band best embodied the new spirit Saturday, it was Franz Ferdinand, whose smart, snappy, playful and urgent performance brought the evening to its peak midway through the show.

The Scottish band has the gift of making incredibly precise playing seem effortless -- every twin-guitar line and drum fill was crisp, every little silence pure. That let singers-guitarists Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy have a lot of fun with scissor kicks and raised arms, while the tuneful hooks and potent rhythms made dancing all but mandatory.

A new song the band played Saturday, announced as “I’m Your Fella,” indicated that the well isn’t dry. Like its big KROQ hit “Take Me Out,” it sounds like two or three songs combined.

Franz Ferdinand’s set launched a home stretch that showcased two other necktie-wearing breakthrough bands. Unfortunately for the Killers, whose radio appeal with “Somebody Told Me” and “Mr. Brightside” rests largely on a throbbing sultriness, the volume suddenly went up to the brink of distortion, flattening those qualities.

The band wore red jackets and ties like an old lounge combo from Las Vegas, its hometown, but singer Brandon Flowers seemed a little tense. Still, he and the band connected strongly with the crowd on “All These Things That I’ve Done.” The audience sang along on the anthem of anguish and awareness, which the singer told them was about “bones and blood and guts and heart and everything that goes along with it.”

Interpol also lost some of its appealing nuances to the volume. The band, whose “Slow Hands” is currently KROQ’s most-played song, broke the evening’s upbeat tone as it brought a taste of New York noir to the stage -- cigarettes, black duds, shadowy lighting and a sound that drew on both the choppy guitar and hard-edged drawl of Television and the dark mystery of the Velvet Underground.

Earlier in the evening, the English band Muse stretched the show’s diversity to the breaking point, unleashing a sort of progressive metal storm that issued mainly from the orchestral rock guitar and high-pitched vocals of the flamboyant little dynamo Matt Bellamy.

The trio’s set was excessive and aggressive, downplaying the songwriting and the Radiohead resemblance of its current album, “Absolution,” in favor of over-the-top grandiosity, but the hit “Time Is Running Out” came through strong, and the band’s earnestness made it easy to be swept up in the showing off.

It was a tough act to follow, especially for longtime indie-rock stalwart Modest Mouse, a band that is as low-key as Muse is brash. This was simply the wrong place for the band, which didn’t even capture the crowd with its breakthrough song “Float On.”

Another band from the college rock world, the Shins, did better with its arty but hook-filled rock. After opening sets by the Music and Snow Patrol, the English band Keane played the Coldplay card with its angelic rock. The evening then took on a wacky brand of complex, edgy emo from Taking Back Sunday and buoyant pop-rock from Jimmy Eat World to close the show.

There was also a surprise appearance by Gwen Stefani. Note to KROQ: You know all our ribbing about not letting any women play Acoustic Christmas? We take it all back.