"WE'RE not Backstreet Men -- we're Backstreet Boys." So goes the T-shirt slogan for the current 'This is Us' tour, which can be all yours to take home for €30.
This year the O2 arena has already hosted New Kids on the Block and witnessed Boyzone's last Dublin headliner with Stephen Gately.
In June, Take That dramatically raised the bar for boyband reunions with a dazzling Croke Park date.
While one may snigger at this prospect of a bit of cheesy mid-1990s nostalgia, Backstreet Boys genuinely are one of the most successful acts of all time with over 100 million album sales.
Sadly, the stage set for 'This is Us' contains no surprises, opting for the usual ' The X-Factor' meets 'Eurovision' format. Indeed, most of their music plays it very safe, ploughing the same well-worn furrow of generic boyband pop by numbers.
It's a night of sugar-sweet saccharine vocals and banal lyrics, but a close-to-capacity crowd lap it up.
To be fair to the Backstreet bunch, they've enough of a catalogue of hits to keep the show ticking along.
'Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely', 'Everybody (Backstreet's Back)' and 'Quit Playing Games with My Heart' are signature songs which have aged remarkably well.
Indeed, Nick, Brian, Howie and AJ are also well preserved, much to the delight of a noisy, fluorescent, and mostly female, crowd that frequently threaten to break screamometer records.
Backstreet also deserve credit for not over-indulging in the customary patronising patter you get from most pop acts. Instead of repetitive shout outs of, "how you doing Dublin", the Boys simply churn out hit after hit without pausing for breath.
Sure, they haven't re-invented the wheel musically, yet they prove in style that they've already left a considerable legacy of entertainment.
PHIL and Paul Hartnoll, the follically challenged brothers who trade as Orbital, were the brainy counterpoint to 1990s dance uber-stars such as Prodigy and Chemical Brothers.
While all around was a whirlwind of chemical-fuelled hedonism, these boffin-ish ravers quietly went about creating some of the most enduring electronica of the era.
Five years ago they split, worn out by the treadmill of touring and recording. But retirement didn't agree with them and after surely the shortest hiatus in pop history they reformed last summer for a series of well-received festival dates, including a headline slot at Electric Picnic. At Tripod, the Hartnolls successfully shrink their arena-scale show down to club-friendly proportions.
Standing behind a bank of instruments, the brothers bop like Duracell bunnies plugged into the mains during a lightning storm, their features illuminated by their trademark surgical lights so that it looks as if they are each sprouting miniature robot eyes.
In the background, meanwhile, three rotating screens flash artsy video footage -- most memorably during 'Satan', their tongue in cheek homage to devil worship.
Sampling has always been a bedrock of the Hartnoll sound -- 'Halcyon and On And On' reworks Opus III"s club hit 'Fine Day'; 'Satan' opens with a blast of Christopher Lee from the Hammer classic 'The Devil Rides Out'.
Sometimes, their cutting and pasting verges on genius, such when they run Belinda Carlisle's 'Heaven on Earth' into Bon Jovi's 'You Give Love A Bad Name'.
For the encore, they unleash one of their moments of true greatness: the Doctor Who-goes-Ibiza epic 'The Box'.
Nostalgia and euphoria can make for a uneasy mix but it proves an unexpectedly potent formula. Everywhere you look ageing ravers are partying like it's 1989.
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/review-backstreet-boys-02-dublin-1944465.html
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