Concert Review: The Used

Every year, corporations spend billions of dollars on marketing, trying to connect with their target demographics and understand their innermost desires. But all they really need to do is whatever The Used has been doing.

The boys from Utah headlined Tuesday at the Wiltern, a venue that, under normal lighting conditions, looks far too gilded and elegant for such a scrappy band. On this night, however, it was transformed into a cavern of angst and darkness, the emo-metal equivalent of the underground-rave sequence in “The Matrix Reloaded.”

This tour comes in support of The Used’s third studio album, “Artwork,” a more muscular and more expensive-sounding update on the bleeding-heart formula they’ve been working with since their self-titled debut in 2002. The stage is the great equalizer, though, stripping away the discrepancies in production value to reveal a consistent history of monstrously anthemic songs.

Unfortunately, Bert McCracken’s voice was also revealed. Thanks to T-Pain and Jay-Z, we’ve become far too concerned with rappers using Auto-Tune to care if a rock singer takes advantage of some studio magic, but McCracken needs more help than most. Anyone who can’t stand listening to him whine on the records is strongly advised to avoid hearing him live.

Of course, no one at the Wiltern Tuesday night cared that McCracken wouldn’t last a single round on “American Idol.” He’s become the kind of pop icon who can pull off striking a Jesus pose at center stage, and he can thank his anti-hero charisma for that, not his vocal abilities. And anyway, his voice was mostly obscured by the instrumental noise, when he wasn’t leading the crowd in a sing-along.

McCracken’s celebrity is impressive, if not a little surpising. His band has sold a few million albums by now, but he can still connect on a visceral level with that most tortured of audiences, the teenage outcasts. Either it’s hell to be in a platinum-selling rock band, or he’s really good at faking it.

Part of the secret is his look, which couldn’t be more perfect if it had been decided on via focus groups. No one rocks shorts better, aside from Angus Young in his schoolboy uniform, and somehow his stringy, shoulder-length hair looks progressively more appropriate the more it’s drenched with sweat.

But more importantly, McCracken knows how to inject himself directly into the veins of his fans. He kept the fist-pump-to-minute ratio high throughout the show, remembered to make an appeal to all the “hard-core” Used fans every time the band played something from the first two albums, and avoided weighing down the set list with too many new songs. Watching him work the crowd was like attending a lecture on counter-culture showmanship.

Sprinkled throughout the show were riffs taken from Michael Jackson, ZZ Top, Blue Oyster Cult and Metallica, all of whom were more talented and more original than The Used. It’s hard to imagine, though, that any of them could fill the Wiltern with more gut-wrenching catharsis. McCracken and the boys had their amps turned to 11 all night, but they were never able to match the decibel level of a few thousand fans screaming as the band took the stage.

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