Kanye West’s floating stage gets Pablo tour off and flying
Opening night of Kanye West’s Saint Pablo Tour proved to be as disorienting and disjointed as the album it promotes, but people will talk about the production for years.
The hip- hop icon spent the entirety of Thursday’s two- hour show at Bankers Life Fieldhouse “flying” above the arena’s floor on a transforming structure that erased the need for a conventional stage. Riding a physical manifestation of the Ultralight Beam he describes on the opening track of 2016 album The Life of Pablo, West delivered a groundbreaking visual achievement. Equal parts Close Encounters of the Third Kind ( for its abundance of bright lights) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome ( for an amped- up crowd that’s part of the show), the Saint Pablo tour is an eye- popping spectacle.
A- list acts Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, U2 and even Kanye’s frenemy, Taylor Swift, have integrated aerial staging and stunts into recent tours.
But West is the first to commit completely to working outside the expectations of what a concert stage is.
Until the show began, audience members had to guess about what they were looking at. A large video screen occupied the space almost always devoted to a conventional stage. Dominating the room was a scaffold- style grid of lights suspended about 20 feet above the floor. The full- court grid ran baseline to baseline, to apply basketball terms to the NBA arena.
Once the house lights went down, West came into view, seated on a square of the grid as it tilted toward his fans. Roughly the size of a boxing ring, the square moved up, down and across the room with West anchored by an elastic tether.
The floating stage occasionally brought West close to his fans, but it also left him isolated throughout the show. Saint Pablo’s opening night featured no hypemen, special guests or DJ in close proximity to West.
With West’s DJ stationed close to the ground, the show struggled with iffy transitions and false starts on a few songs — understandable miscues on opening night.
The format allowed a mosh- pit free for-all in the general- admission section, where eager fans raised arms and jumped to get as close as possible to West as he moved around the room.
Kanye was at his most Kanye when interrupting a song to chide security guards for establishing a perimeter beneath the square.
“The whole concept is they’re supposed to go wherever they want,” West said of fans on the floor.
Still, before the song ended, West called on security to help a female attendee being jostled below.
Despite the show’s intriguing contrast of one man’s isolation in a sea of people, it wasn’t an evening of melancholy or soul- searching for West.
He came to rock. Heavy tunes performed at high volume fared best in this minimalist, experimental setting. The clanging metal of Can’t Tell Me Nothing sparked an audience frenzy, and Jesus
Walks transformed the room into the biggest trunk speaker you’ll find.
On a personal note, West paused to apologize to Nike CEO Mark Parker after having ripped the company that collaborated with the musician from 2007 to 2012. West also offered thanks to his current shoe partner, Adidas.
Oddly enough, the midair stage made it difficult to get a glimpse of West’s footwear.
Otherwise, he wore black pants with red stripes at the sides and a sleeveless shirt topped by an oversize jacket.
In true Kanye tradition, West lobbed a few comments toward his detractors. Surely to be quoted for weeks to come was his line “I know they call me crazy sometimes; I just call them lazy all the time.”
Work ethic aside, Saint Pablo needs refinement. Trimming a half- hour of songs would be a good start.
Twelve of Thursday’s 31 songs appear on the hit- and- miss Pablo album, but the set list surprisingly lacked standout Pablo tunes No More Parties in L. A. and Ultralight Beam.
With an addition- by- subtraction approach, the tour’s sounds can become as captivating as the visuals.