REVIEW: Walk the Moon reminds Musikfest they're more than their biggest hit

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — With four shows and counting left before a looming indefinite hiatus, Ohio pop-rockers Walk The Moon took command of Musikfest’s Steel Stage on Friday night and reminded us that they’re more than their one biggest hit.

• Pop rock group Walk the Moon played Musikfest's Steel Stage Friday Night
• The group recently announced an indefinite hiatus after they play a handful of shows left this year
• If the years of performing have taken a toll on the group's energy, it didn't show

The group is best known for their smash hit “Shut Up and Dance,” from the 2014 album "Talking is Hard." If you weren’t comatose for the first half of 2015, you’ve heard it.

Like most of Walk the Moon’s catalog, it’s bright, upbeat and profoundly danceable.

It’s a song about, and that feels like, letting go.

Last month, the band announced that after finishing out their already-scheduled shows this year, they will take an “indefinite hiatus.”

Friday night’s MusikFest headliner show was the first they’ve played since the announcement; three performances now remain for the band this year, perhaps forever.

“We’re about to take some time away,” vocalist Nicholas Petricca told the crowd, which filled about two-thirds of the Steel Stage’s seats. He only mentioned the impending hiatus once.

“It’s been the work of our lives. This has been our life’s work.”

If the years of performing took a toll on the group’s passion or energy, it didn’t show in Bethlehem. Beyond being musicians, they were excellent performers and showmen, in particular Petricca, though he was not alone.

The band’s bright, uplifting sound demands a certain level of energy. More than that, it demands the band to at least seem to be having fun, a point on which they certainly delivered.

Friday’s setlist spanned the band’s history, from their 2010 debut album "I Want! I Want!" to 2021’s "Heights," and showed off the group’s trademark bright, upbeat pop rock often inflected with shimmering synthesizers and anthemic, tom-heavy drum lines.

The band departs from that comfort zone at their peril. A performance later in the show of hard-rock-accented “Headphones” sounded good, but felt out of place and a bit awkward.

As the song’s outro transitioned into Led Zeppelin’s "Kashmir," it was sonically epic — and more than a little confusing.

However, throughout the set, it was easy to feel like we were just waiting to hear their biggest hit.

As one woman outside the Steel Stage gates told her friend, the appealing thing about a Walk The Moon show is “You show up, you sing ‘Shut Up and Dance,’ and you leave.”

When that moment came, though, it was ecstatic.