Lawrence.com

Good friends made for a great concert as buddies Travis and Remy Zero played to a packed Liberty Hall crowd Sunday night.

After playing in front of less than two dozen fans last fall at The Bottleneck, Remy Zero took advantage of the perks of a larger audience, asking the crowd to sing along and often thanking fans for their support.

Focusing on tunes from their new release "The Golden Hum," the quintet drew the most response from the radio hit "Prophecy," but their poignant lyrics and masterful playing claimed some new fans who were there mainly for the headliners.

Having stepped into the Brit-pop spotlight vacated by Oasis and shunned by Radiohead, Travis appropriately opened with the crowd-pleasing "Sing" while a Champagne Supernova light show swirled behind them. Including hits such as "Flowers in the Window" and "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" the band livened up the night with crowd banter, such as lead singer Francis Healy's rebuttal that he wasn't a robotic song singer after receiving numerous requests from the crowd for particular songs.

After an hour of soft and pretty tunes, Travis got down to rocking with the main set's closer, "Blue Flashing Light." The encore continued the rock theme after a brief acoustic respite � Healy and bassist Douglas Payne covered Britney Spears' "... Baby One More Time," one of the few covers in history better than the original.

Current tour cover "All the Young Dudes" returned to the rock motif, as did the encore's ender, AC/DC's "Back in Black," during which Healy sounded like a prepubescent Brian Johnson.

With a wonderful live show, Travis has, to paraphrase its "Slide Show," climbed the Wonderwall and is doing quite well on the other side.