Abel Tesfaye, AKA the Weeknd, has chosen a tiny island in Essex for his only UK show of the year, which makes sense given his graduation from blog cause célèbre to the sort of mainstream artist likely to get played on Towie.
His UK record company has chosen to mark his breakthrough into the major league with a party in the guise of a bijou one-day festival. The profligacy on show – an all-you-can-eat-and-drink-by-the-pool affair for 200 staff and media, plus a further 200 fans via ballot – suits an artist whose lush, dolorous ballads are steeped in hedonism and the high life.
The Weeknd is helicoptered in for the occasion. As he and his three-man band launch into High for This, the reaction is palpable, or rather visible: a sea of raised mobile phones from which you could watch the gig. Instead, everyone is craning to see the Weeknd, whose sheer exuberance is far from the solemn character of his records. His transition from solipsist soul boy to charismatic showman is striking.
Equally startling is his falsetto and the combined impact of guitar, drums and keyboards. On House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls, he sounds like Michael Jackson fronting an industrial band. His speaking voice is as soft and childlike as Jackson’s, quite at odds with his dark, twisted lyrics.
This is music increasingly designed for arenas, from the pristine pulse of Crew Love to the cover of Beyoncé’s Drunk in Love, which essays a new genre: R&B metal. This is some of the most thunderously sombre music ever to induce mosh mania. He unveils a new song bearing the provisional title Mood Music 2 and typically Weeknd-ish lyrics about love as addiction. The best tracks are from 2015: Can’t Feel My Face could be Kraftwerk playing new jack swing, while Earned It has the romance and drama of a Bond theme. Fifty Shades of troubled funk, and counting.
