Tuesday 26 March 2013

The Weeknd LIVE at The Electric Ballroom

Here's a posing question.... Is it good or bad to hear your fans singing over you? Well after the live performance from The Weeknd last night at the Electric Ballroom, Camden this question raised its awkward head a few times. It's a beautiful thing to hear a crowd sing back the lyrics towards the stage or fill in the blanks. Not only was the crowd evidently loyal, enthusiastic and a real mix of personalities and sexes but boy, were they were loud. This DID leave me to question the capabilities of the Ballroom's sound system. In all fairness however, when I've been to gigs there before the sound system was never an issue. This leaves me to assume that the majority of the tracks, simply due to their laid back beats and starkness to enable Abel Tesfaye's vocals to take centre stage gave the night the perfect level and production for the crowd to feature in the live performance as much as The Weeknd himself.

The pace was for the most part slow, as could be predicted but was hyped up with the inclusion of some faster paced tracks or larger productions 'Glass Table Girls', 'The Party & After the Party', 'Lonely Star', 'Heaven or Las Vegas' and of course Drake collaboration and hit 'Crew Love'.  The drop or mix of one track into another was smooth resulting in the show seamlessly and ever so smoothly serenading the crowd with those sexy, sexy vocals. The use of a self indulgent, prog rock like guitar solo here and there gave an emotive but alternative break down at an R&B gig but suited the heavy production and dirty bass well.

With such similar vocals to Michael Jackson it must have been hard to break into the scene... However, The Weekend's instrumentation, use of heartfelt pain and appeal to his crowd means the only way for this 23 year old can go is up. As he said "I want to see all your faces before we start playing arenas". This guy has big plans and I have no doubt The Weeknd will get all the support he needs from his ever loving and LOUD fan base.