Concert review: This 'Urban' scores big win in Jacksonville

Given the Jaguars' recent history, dropping the name "Urban" around TIAA Bank Field isn't likely to win you a lot of friends. 

On the other side of the wall, it's a different story. That's where Keith Urban delivered a winner Thursday night at Daily's Place, the amphitheater attached to the stadium. He played for better than two hours, sweating through about two dozen songs on a scorching August night, and he'll do it again Friday. 

Stylistically, Urban's show was all over the place. There's a fair bit of Midwestern '80s rock, touches of blues and a whole lot of smart songwriting, all packaged with a little country sheen that would sound right at home driving with the car windows down.

No fiddles or pedal steel here, but there's no mistaking the country roots in Urban's songs. When he talks to the crowd, the Down Under accent is right there, but when he sings he has a darned-near perfect country voice, high and plaintive with a little catch on the slow songs, mean and growly on the faster ones. 

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As magnetic as he can be at the microphone, you don't necessarily go to a Keith Urban show to listen to the guy sing. Urban is his own lead guitar player, and he's got some serious chops, way more than you might suspect if all you know of him is "American Idol" and the tabloids.

Pretty much every song erupted sooner or later into a big Urban solo and he can definitely blow your hair back with his flashy guitar work. 

Urban lays on the charm a little thick sometimes, but he really knows how to work a crowd, singing songs from four different microphone positions, pulling a fan onstage for a birthday hug and handing a just-played guitar to another as a souvenir.

He shot a video with a fan's cellphone and sang a bit of "Happy Anniversary" (a nod to fellow Aussies the Little River Band) to a couple celebrating 41 years. He got 5,000 or so people to sing along to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," even if those high notes weren't particularly pretty to hear.

Urban played in front of a solid band, including second guitarist Nathan Barlowe, who performed several songs on an electronic pad device called the Phantom. It was kind of hard to tell just what sounds the Phantom was making at times, but when Barlowe took a brief solo he quickly turned the place into an electronic dance club.

Urban ran through nearly all of his big hits Thursday — "Blue Ain't Your Color," "Days Go By," "You Look Good in My Shirt," "Somebody Like You" and the new single, "Brown Eyes Baby" were particular highlights — and chances are good they'll be played again at his Friday night show.

Jacksonville is just one of three cities on Urban's Speed of Now Tour to get two shows. In Toronto, where he played in July, he played more or less the same show both nights, switching out just three or four songs. 

The only real misstep of the night — and it happened three times — was when guest singers "joined" the show via taped performances on the video screens behind the stage. Julia Michaels, Pink and Carrie Underwood popped up on different songs, and it felt out of place every time when he could have just brought opening act Ingrid Andress onstage to fill in and do the whole thing live.

Andress opened the show with a 40-minute set that, like Urban's, was only sort of country. She's got a collection of good songs (her new album, "Good Person," comes out later this month) and a voice that can kick into another gear when she wants it to.

She certainly raised some eyebrows when she busted into the Allman Brothers Band's "Whipping Post" midway through her set. That was pretty nervy, considering that the Allmans formed just a few miles away at a house in Riverside.