“It’s nothing heavy – no brain surgery, no big deal,” Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas told Friday’s Hilton Coliseum crowd before the band launched into “3 a.m.”

His comment solidly foreshadowed the events to come.

But for what the band was trying to accomplish, it worked.

Most of Matchbox Twenty’s music is laid back and has a medium pace, and the concert took on the same relaxed feel.

Rob Thomas strutted across the stage wearing tight blue pants and a plain black T-shirt, projecting his voice toward all ends of the stadium.

Thomas writes songs about relationships and heartache, universal themes that resonated with the fans, who swayed back and forth during slow songs and bobbed their heads for the louder numbers.

The show was clearly not sold out; patches of empty seats in the far reaches of the balcony stood out. Still, the crowd’s energy managed to fill the entire coliseum.

The band covered all of its major radio singles, kicking off the show with the recent single “Bent” and spacing out the rest of their hits to hold the attention of those only casually into Matchbox Twenty’s music.

Where Matchbox Twenty really shined was not on its radio-ready hit singles, but on the untainted album tracks.

The group reached a climax during the spine-tingling “Beautiful Girl,” easily the most heartfelt track on the group’s new album and a songwriting masterstroke.

In one of the concert’s more intimate moments, a string of light bulbs was draped across the stage, creating a starscape of light as Thomas sat at his shiny black grand piano to sing the quiet “You Won’t Be Mine.” Lighters waved in the air, echoing the stage lights.

“Real World,” “Back to Good,” and the new single “If You’re Gone” went over well with the crowd, who would get up from its seats to sing along.

Video screens projected images of money, road signs, children, graveyards and other random objects during certain points of the concert.

The band deserves credit for simply relying on the music to put on a good show and not ruining the concert with extravagant stadium rock theatrics.

Matchbox Twenty didn’t do the predictable hit single encore set either. Sure, it saved the most popular song, “Push,” for the encore, but it sandwiched it between two lesser-known songs.

“We realize what we do isn’t all that special unless people come see it,” Thomas said before playing the final tune of the evening, the upbeat “Black and White People,” which provided the opportunity for some improvisation.

A three-piece horn section took the stage, and Thomas danced around as he sang, shaking a tambourine and finding excitement in the simplicity of a jam session.

Matchbox Twenty isn’t trying to shake things up in the music industry or make a dent in the history of rock `n’ roll. The band just wants to play its simple music, please the fans, and have a good time.

And last Friday at Hilton, they met their goal.