Starboy takes a victory lap in Toronto
The Weeknd at the Air Canada Centre, May 26 (out of 4)
He belongs to the world now, but The Weeknd started here. The Weeknd started here.
Had you been blindly teleported from some random geo-location into the Air Canada Centre on Friday evening for the first of Scarboroughbred Abel Tesfaye’s two consecutive hometown shows in the venue, you wouldn’t be privy to too many sitespecific details to indicate that you were witnessing an actual homecoming gig by The Weeknd.
Presumably, of course, most in the sold-out room realized they were, in fact, in Toronto. And if not, once this city’s unofficial mayor, Aubrey Drake Graham, showed up to give his onetime pet project and protégé a theatrical hug and a generous endorsement as “the voice of a generation,” there should have been no doubt that they had, in fact, landed in “The 6.” It’s “the greatest city in the motherf---in’ world,” according to Drake.
Otherwise, though, there was little deviation from the script The Weeknd has observed on previous North American dates on his Starboy: Legend of the Fall tour.
“Is this the biggest party in the city right now? Is this the biggest party in The 6 right now?” he asked the crowd early in the game, a couple of tunes after rising from the substage catacombs on an electric lift amidst a fog-shrouded pyramid of laser lights to the Daft Punk-abetted beats of — what else? — “Starboy.”
That is exactly the same question Tesfaye appears to have asked the crowds in every other city he’s visited on the road thus far this year: “Is this the biggest party in (INSERT CITY HERE) right now?”
And that was about it for banter for the night, save a couple of reminders that “I go by the name of The Weeknd” and shout-outs to openers Belly, 6lack and Rae Sremmurd as they popped onto the stage to perform “Might Not,” “PRBLMS” and “Black Beatles,” respectively, at various stages during the show.
Clearly, when you’re rockin’ a set as briskly paced and tightly packed as the 90-minute whirlwind The Weeknd is rockin’ right now (while also rockin’ “Rockin’ ”), there’s little room for improvisation night to night, even when you’re taking a victory lap in front of a delirious hometown crowd.
The set is a good one, mostly doing away with the broody/creepy slow jams of The Weeknd’s earliest recordings in favour of the lighterhearted, increasingly Jackson-esque pop fare that started to sneak in on 2015’s Beauty Behind the Madness, and has fully taken over in the Starboy era.
It might have lingered a little bit too long on the lover-man material during the midsection, but once a Motown-ish “Earned It” was dispensed with, out came the bangers and the energy level went through the roof.
For a chap who generally seems at pains to utter no more than a mumble in public offstage, too, Tesfaye has grown into a charming, kinetic and fully engaged performer. He never stopped bounding up and down the arrow-shaped proscenium, diligently playing to every corner of the room equally and flashing broad smiles the entire time.
His three-piece band didn’t have a great deal to do — although there was a bass guitar and a drum kit onstage, most of the heavy lifting was done by the racks upon racks of keyboards and electronic gear at stage left — but Tesfaye’s rubbery falsetto was live and in good shape, albeit often heavily cloaked in backing tracks.
He did appear to cede the microphone to a “guide vocal” at one point during the Romantics-checkin’ “Secrets,” perhaps, but this was not the lip-sync fest that such rigorously programmed, tech-dependent pop performances often wind up being. And when the relentlessly deafening electro-glitz faded away and it came time to croon “Angel” over nothing but a few sparsely strummed electric-guitar chords, it was clear Tesfaye’s choirboy-worthy voice doesn’t really need the extra help.
He could have simply called out titles and let the crowd take the reins, mind you, as there was a chorus of 20,000 joyously belting out every word along with him for the duration. That chorus had a distinctly feminine ring to it, but the ratio of young women travelling in packs and teenage girls with moms to bros only stood at about three to one. Clearly, there’s a healthy male market out there for The Weeknd’s sexand drug-drenched nihilism, too. The sight of so many moms and giddy girls couldn’t help but bring the May 22 bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester to mind. The presence of bomb-sniffing black labs, metal detectors and extra police at the gates offered clear evidence of the global fallout from that senseless tragedy. But once the music started, it was all love and all joy in the room. Just as it should have been.
The Weeknd’s rise from uncompromising indie enigma to one of the biggest pop stars on the planet has been a triumphant thing to behold, and the steady improvement of his live performances since that first tentative Mod Club gig back in 2011 shows he’s working hard to rise to the occasion.
If you walked into the Air Canada Centre dubious on Friday night, chances are you left a fan.