It makes sense that, just weeks before the Weeknd finally, really goes public with the major label-backed release of Trilogy— three free mixtapes, remastered and packaged as one — he would stage a spectacle and make you jump through hoops for it.
Friday night was the first of four sold-out concerts at Toronto’s Sound Academy, a venue situated in Toronto’s docklands that provides a view of the city’s harbour and skyline. In a certain kind of weather, like Friday’s, when it’s misty and frigid, it can feel like the middle of nowhere (the place is barely serviced by public transport). And so it was the perfect setting for Abel Tesfaye’s swan dive from the precipice of his own self-imposed isolation — he’s yet to do a single interview — into the ravenous yoke of the wider world.
Of course, Sound Academy is the biggest general admission venue in the city, so yes: a 'til-recent unsigned R&B act from Toronto just sold out four consecutive nights at one of the largest concert venues in his hometown. That’s an unprecedented event for any indie act, Canadian or otherwise, but especially for a black singer in a market that’s still — despite the success of Drake, Kardinal Offishall, even Deborah Cox back in the day — warming up to “urban” acts.
“i'm back in the city that didn't let me leave for 21 years. 4 back to back to back to back shows in toronto. xo,” Tesfaye tweeted the day before the show series kicked off.
Since House of Balloons propelled him to success early last year, Tesfaye’s become one of the high-profile names (along with L.A.’s Frank Ocean) tagged with a renewed mainstream interest in R&B. Yet his reticence to play the celebrity game — or, perhaps, cannily throwing back to a time before branding superseded good music — led to cynical speculation that he wouldn’t last.
At his very first show in Toronto last summer, an impromptu impossible-to-get-into showcase just one week before performing in front of thousands at Drake’s annual OVO Fest bash, Tesfaye was excruciatingly timid — but still, a total star. Nerves heightened the drama of a beautiful performance and the stakes surrounding a fortuitous rise.
House of Balloons went on to become shortlisted for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize. Thursday and Echoes of Silence, the mixtapes rounding out an urban noir “trilogy,” further explored the druggy malaise and sobering self-loathing of the first project, while building to something more sonically geared toward live performance. Over the past year he’s completed a small university-town tour of southern Ontario (drawing the New York Times’ Jon Caramanica to Guelph, Ont.) and played splashier gigs in New York City and London.
All of this, it seems, was to prepare the Weeknd for something his hometown — maybe even Canada? — has never seen before. Tesfaye has markedly improved as a performer since that shaky first show last August, but what remains undeniable, whether you hate his songs or love them, is a voice that’s thrilling and magnetic. He sings so effortlessly and convincingly all other singers should just give up.
Nervous, like at the debut show, Tesfaye's wavering falsetto communicates a vulnerability that softens the menacing edge of songs like “Loft Music” and “Glass Table Girls.” But now, piloting a multi-night run of shows, he has weaponized that trill so he can preside comfortably, wearing all black and in command, over an audience that’s equal parts screaming women and awestruck men. This cultivated confidence and a live show that, for me, bested the tepid Toronto outing of his contemporary Frank Ocean, signifies something special for the Weeknd’s future. Toronto was once the city that didn’t let him leave, but he left and came back, and it feels like he’s here to stay.
Watch the Weeknd perform the new single "Enemy," for the first time:
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