Timberlake - Not quite the king of pop.

There's no denying Justin Timberlake's talent. But while the pop superstar can do it all — singing, acting and dancing — his status as heir apparent to Michael Jackson's throne will have to wait. After filling three-quarters of Quicken Loans Arena Saturday night, and performing nearly two-and-a-half hours to a bevy of mostly 20- and 30-something females, Timberlake has no doubt transformed himself from a boy-band idol into a mature adult artist. But where he ignites his fans with his hip-hop beats, smooth dance moves, suggestive lyrics and soulful range, he struggles when changing pace, killing momentum with weak ballads and love songs.

Playing in the round, with a complex stage featuring moving platforms, trap doors and catwalks, Timberlake first appeared as a shadow, hidden behind a fiery glowing screen, before revealing himself and his ensemble of singers, dancers and musicians as he opened with "Futuresex/LoveSound." Armed with a wireless microphone, Timberlake danced his way around the circular stage, crouching to sing to a fan on one side, then rushing off to grab a dancer to tango on another side. The real surprise though was in Timberlake's comfort with an instrument, as he played acoustic guitar for "Like I Love You," and turned to piano on "Until the End of Time" and "What Goes Around," even though the latter song nearly put the crowd to sleep.

Maybe recognizing his mistake, Timberlake quickly changed gears for "Chop Me Up," inviting his producer Timbaland to the stage, who lent his vocals to the song, and then stayed to DJ during a 20-minute intermission. After the brief break, Timberlake reemerged to reenergize the audience with "Rock Your Body," but as quickly as he retook the stage, he ruined the mood by slowing it down with a medley of "Gone," "Take It From Here," "Boutique" and "Last Night." Whatever the reason, the choice to continually mix it up nearly rendered the second part of the concert a bore (even though the screaming females stayed adoring), and only regained the sexy style Timberlake displayed earlier in the evening for the final trio of "Cry Me a River," "Love Stoned" and "SexyBack." n

Zs

Beachland Tavern

Tuesday, January 30

The four men who make up Zs set up their instruments facing each other, turned on the lights fixed to the music stands in front of them, made eye contact and began playing to a small tavern crowd. The patrons didn't look on in disbelief, but in a confused sort of admiration of what was occurring. Zs included a tenor sax player (who looked like a jazzbo from the '80s), a drummer and two guitarists. On occasion, one guitarist, Charlie Looker, would switch to keyboards. While the band doesn't have a mound of recordings, most don't include vocals. However, one piece that the group performed did include voices, but not in a standard manner. The quick, staccato voices flew over lines of indecipherable writings, intoned in a way that recalled early Anticon releases.

The instrumentation displayed the adept players as well as creative compositions. The music the quartet played wasn't jazz but was influenced by it. It wasn't punk, but the Chuck Taylors laced up on group members' feet, as well as black hoodies, suggested such an influence. Of course, due to the repetitive nature of each composition, either kraut rock or New York downtown experimentalism could describe the sound. Perhaps a combination of the two could adequately describe the robotic lurching of the group. Even though Zs took the stage a bit before 11 p.m., after taking time to have a snack from the Beachland kitchen, their set didn't push the hour mark. They performed five songs, with the last number including half of the group clapping in some skewed rhythm while guitar and keyboard were showcased. The song, even if not announced as the final piece of the evening, sounded like the end of a night out. It was. — Dave Cantor

Girl Talk

Grog Shop

Friday, February 2

Outside, it was a crispy four degrees, but the Grog Shop's ventilation system was desperately blasting out cold air to try to keep the warmth at a livable level and minimize sweaty guys peeling off their shirts. The heat source was the sold-out crowd for the one-man, short-attention-span-driven remix/mash-up artiste known as Girl Talk. Girl Talk performances are infamous for anarchic fans swarming the stage and actually encouraging such behavior, and Friday's fans were psyched up to attack the stage before Girl Talk's set actually started. It's hard enough for concert performers to sustain audience clap-alongs past a song's first chorus. That Girl Talk's onslaught of sampled pop hooks and riffs kept the crowd constantly hopping is a testimony to the music's genuine, substantial appeal.

The Grog's bouncers deserve recognition for, among other duties, getting people down from the ceiling structures without being draconian or fascist. About 25 minutes into Girl Talk's set, a cord accidentally got yanked from the laptop that was inciting all the booty shaking. More than merely unplugged, the cord was sufficiently damaged to take nearly 20 minutes to either repair it or locate a replacement. Girl Talk's Gregg Gillis is known to mingle and crowd-surf during his shows, but he was too smothered by sweaty party animals to escape the stage. Since Gillis manually launches and layers his countless hundreds of recognizable pop song samples that must merely repeat in his absence, his confinement led to a more interestingly varied, dense show.

The first of too many opening acts was button-pushing duo Ken Rei, whose un-danceable unpredictability was its best asset. Conversely, barely edgy in 1989, Rot Wylder's formulaic, techno-industrial beats with lime/pink-pixelated video of animal carcasses became downright painful as the intoxicated duo aggressively exerted uncoordinated "dance moves" in failed attempts to make the music less monotonous. DJ Mike Filly spun a fine set that was most engaging when it was most Girl-Talky and mash-uppy. Deliciously insane extraterrestrial-circus jump-ropers Double Dutch Will Take You Higher delivered a good time, despite their obvious, awkward struggles with the Grog's small stage and low ceilings. — Michael David Toth

Ian Bagg

Cleveland Improv

Saturday, February 3

It wasn't long into comedian Ian Bagg's 90-minute set that the lanky Canadian started working the audience. Actually, working over the audience would be a more apt description of his approach. He first focused on an elderly couple sitting at the front of the stage and asked if "grandpa took one of those blue pills and then rode grandma hard." When their daughter objected, he turned on her, dubbing her the "lesbian daughter." As he made his way around the full house at the first of two Saturday night shows, he encountered a woman who was the mother of five children and a bride-to-be who was holding her bachelorette party at the club. Then there was the woman who kept yelling something about the homeless and shouted to Bagg, "You're doomed." The comic had a field day with her, before concluding, "This is the weirdest front row of all time."

In between bantering with the crowd, Bagg worked some of his own material into the set. He did his "Mormon joke," quipping, "We should have sent them to Iraq so they could go all over the country in their suits and on their bikes." "I like blowjobs," Bagg said at one point. "I don't have a joke for it; I just thought I'd put it out there." While his material didn't always get a big laugh (and at one point, Bagg said, "I'm sorry I'm having more fun than you people"), he eventually won the audience over and even sold out of the CDs he was peddling after the performance, promising to come back every six months, but "not in the summer when it is humid."

A heavyset comic from Columbus opened with a set that, predictably, made fun of his weight. "I just want to see my penis again," he said of his desire to go on a diet. But he vowed not to go on the "Subway diet": "I don't want to be associated with that asshole Jared." While it lacked consistency, the guy's set was moderately amusing and went over reasonably well with the audience. — Jeff Niesel