Concert Review: The Weeknd, Schoolboy Q, Jhené Aiko @ Molson Amphitheatre

By: Robert Liwanag –

The Weeknd.

Abel Tesfaye didn’t toil away like most artists do – he went from mysterious figure posting tracks onto YouTube to singular figure in R&B in a relatively short time period. It did, however, take some time for the Weeknd to build a reputation as a live act. How can you possibly replicate such dark, intimate, moody sounds in a larger, rowdier setting? Four months after his debut mixtape, House of Balloons, dropped, Tesfaye opened the 2011 OVO Fest. His performance was disappointing – his voice often faltered, unable to reach those trademark high notes, and the man now famous for making nocturnal music was performing while the sun was still high up. The crowd was curious at best, unenthusiastic at worse.

That was three years ago. Between then and now, The Weeknd released two mixtapes, a compilation, a proper studio record, as well as touring (including an appearance at Coachella). On Sunday night, The Weeknd brought his exclusive, four-date “King of the Fall” concert tour to Toronto, with Schoolboy Q and Jhené Aiko (another much-talked about artist closely associated with Drake) to the Molson Amphitheatre. At first glance, the choice of those two artists sounds a bit odd. But Aiko’s crooning and Schoolboy Q’s crazed delivery contrasted surprisingly well, and set up the audience for Tesfaye – her performance was intimate and his was chaotic; combine those two things and you get the Weeknd’s music.

Aiko was up first in a black dress and cigarette in hand, smiling and dancing around the stage to adoring women in the front row. She began her relatively short set with “3:16 AM” and ended it with set highlight “From Time,” the Drake track from Nothing Was the Same, in which she was featured. Throughout her performance, she possessed an air of confidence and ease more readily found in veteran singers.

Moments later, Schoolboy Q followed suit with his bucket hat and a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey (he was wearing Phil Kessel, for those interested). He was barely intelligible, but won the crowd immediately with his anything-goes passion. “They finally let me across the border,” he said to his fans earlier in his set, to raucous applause, before playing several songs from his 2013 album Oxymoron, including “Hell of a Night” (which received the biggest reaction by far, and caused most of the audience to jump up and down frantically), “Collard Greens” and “Man of the Year.” Schoolboy Q rapped as if his career depended on it, and by the time he left the stage, a thick coating of sweat clung to him.

Tesfaye performed a crowd-pleasing, hour-and-a-half set – it was essentially a greatest hits collection. “House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls” was particularly memorable for the unsettling way the beat changes in the latter half of the song, as were his passionate vocals during fan favourites “The Morning,” “Belong to the World” and “Often.” During his set, his backing band was mostly hidden from view behind a giant screen that projected surreal, sexually explicit images ofthreesomes and women in bondage, and during “The Birds, Part II,” scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds appeared. The Weeknd’s songs have always managed to find a striking balance between sensuality and shock, and during his set, the images helped make his darker songs feel even darker.

The Weeknd that opened OVO in 2011 and the Weeknd that performed at the Molson Amphitheatre were completely different artists. Eschewing his usual stoicism, Tesfaye walked around, bantered with the crowd and cracked a few smiles. Maybe it was the fact that he was in Toronto and felt he couldn’t let the city where he started down, but his forceful performance was the result of a much more confident Tesfaye finally learning how to carry himself on stage, alternating between bouts of frenzy and intense introspection. The audience expected nothing less from the self-proclaimed king of the fall.