Nov. 07--Mom knows best. The Weeknd, for all his troubled and troubling narrators, at least acknowledges that much.
He began his sold-out concert Friday at the United Center with words of advice from the family matriarch: "Mama called me destructive/ said it would ruin me one day/ 'Cause every woman that loved me/ I seemed to push me away." But just like the kid who has to test the hot stove for himself despite his parent's pleas, the Toronto singer -- also known as Abel Tesfaye -- creates a world in which his male protagonists are on intimate terms with self-immolation.
It's an unlikely formula for pop success, but Tesfaye has made it so. His latest album, "Beauty Behind the Madness," debuted at No. 1 on the pop chart a few months ago, and he recently became the first artist ever to own the top three spots on the R song charts.
His rapid ascent the last three years from clubs to theaters to arenas isn't because of showmanship. He moves so infrequently that when he broke out a few dance steps near the end of his 95-minute performance, his fans acted as though he suddenly decided to pass out hundred-dollar bills. His most distinctive physical feature is a hair style that suggests an exotic plant (modeled after the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat). And yet, the predominantly female audience was shrieking at Bieber-esque volume levels as the singer wielded his voice with scalpel-like precision: the midrange vibrato, the falsetto that swung from sweet and needy to sharp and bloodthirsty.
Claustrophobia defined his world, and his songs created a prison more than a sanctuary. Amid the savage thump of "House of Balloons," he offered a glimpse of what it's like on the inside: "If it hurts to breathe/ Open the window." But where exactly is the window in this Godforsaken room?
The concert opened with Tesfaye standing behind a scrim that resembled a cage. Later, it morphed into a video screen that flashed images of TV static and wobbly, abstract shapes and colors. It mirrored songs populated by insecure characters who descend into drugs and wanton sex with multiple anonymous partners. Though the lyrics and choruses hinted at the hedonism of mainstream hip-hop and R, this was not a chest-thumping celebration of male pillaging. Tesfaye's voice evoked a numbed-out survivor who had resorted to self-medication to mask harsher truths.
A backing trio created muscular if unstable soundscapes that underpinned the singer's confessions. At times he flirted with mainstream formulas -- the power chords of "Angel," the tremulous balladry of "Earned It." But there was always something a little off, a sense of unease that somehow translated as charisma.
It's complex emotional terrain, but Tesfaye has managed to package it as pop. His R noir took on the outward trappings of a Michael Jackson dance track on "Can't Feel My Face" even as he sang about drowning in a vat of cocaine. His latest single, the set-closing "The Hills," is a horror show of depravity sung with the narcotized slurs of a junkie. "Dark Times" sounded like it crept from the basement of a Gothic mansion populated by bloodsucking drug dealers and their hollowed-out clients.
He ended the show with the same song with which he concluded his 2013 tour, "Wicked Games." Despite mom's best efforts to set her boy straight, his world of shame and lies was still too seductive to avoid and too debilitating to escape.
greg@gregkot.com
The Weeknd set list Friday at the United Center:
1. Real Life
2. Losers
3. Acquainted
4. Often
5. High for This
6. The Party the After Party
7. King of the Fall / Crew Love / Or Nah / Professional
8. The Morning
9. House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls
10. Tell Your Friends
11. The Birds, Part 1
12. Shameless
13. Earned It
14. Dark Times
15. As You Are
16. Angel
17. D.D. / In the Night
18. Can't Feel My Face
19. Prisoner
20. The Hills
Encore:
21. Wicked Games
