JUSTIN BIEBER at the Air Canada Centre, Wednesday, May 18. Rating: NN
Madonna couldn't dream up a more S&M routine for a pop show.
"I'm looking right in your eyes and you're not even paying attention," Justin Bieber sternly told a fan as he dangled a bottle of water tantalizingly above her head.
The fan wanted to sip from the bottle that had touched the 22-year-old Canadian pop star's lips. He would eventually give her what she wanted but not before berating her for crushing a smaller fan as she aggressively pawed at his feet to claim the plastic bottle.
The disconnect between Bieber and his fans has been a persistent theme in the reviews and chatter surrounding his 64-date Purpose tour, and it was evident throughout the first of his two shows at the Air Canada Centre.
In the weeks leading up to his Toronto gigs, he cancelled fan meet-and-greets and announced he would no longer pose for photos because "I feel like a zoo animal and I wanna be able to keep my sanity." Meanwhile, the tabs are reporting he has lost focus and liable to call off his remaining dates even though he has seven months to go.
Wild screaming from the mostly female audience continually rang out, but Bieber only seemed fitfully engaged throughout the 90-minute-plus set of songs primarily from last year's well received Purpose album.
The show began promisingly enough: Bieber floated in a Plexiglas cube above the stage, wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey in front of a wraparound screen displaying Renaissance art. He spent much of the opening segment going up and down hydraulic elevators or ensconced in cages. It all seemed unnecessarily complicated, and if Bieber felt like he was going through the motions, he did little to dispel that impression.
An apathetic dance routine to Where Are U Now set the tone for much the choreography that was to come, while a defiant I'll Show You was sung from inside a box projecting patterned visuals – an obvious metaphor for his emotional fishbowl minus the emotion.
He was backed by a five-piece band – including a DJ – and 12 backup dancers, who sprung into action and danced to a couple of top 40 hits when the visuals froze behind the Halsey-featuring The Feeling.
Despite the iffy beginning, Bieber warmed up as the show rolled on. He sat on a couch alone at the foot of the stage and strummed an acoustic guitar for new song Look At The Stars and scathing single Love Yourself – his most impassioned vocal performance of the set. It was also the only moment in the show that didn't feature backing tracks, but even when the focus was squarely on spectacle, Bieber rarely mustered up something more than bemused.
During the playful mid-tempo number Company, he and several dancers climbed onto a floating trampoline, and toward the end of the song Bieber nonchalantly did a few flips. The audience shrieked each time. At this point his indolence started to seem intentional because those flips legitimately looked fun. Was he finally having fun? He wouldn't let on. His expression was worlds closer to "Yeah, I just did that" rather than "ta-da!"
Next came a solo, chest-pounding dance routine to the trappy R&B number No Sense that seemed to energize him for when the dancers returned for older single As Long As You Love Me.
A drum kit rose up from the floor and he hopped aboard as it continued upward toward the ceiling. It was time for his drum solo, but his playing was tentative and he struggled to lock into a groove. "I just couldn't catch a vibe at all," he explained to the band, his back to the audience.
Boring celebrity stuff aside, Bieber is a capable singer, musician and dancer. All of these bits were clearly designed to show off his musicality and physicality outside the perfunctory dance routines, but he never gave himself over to the music.
He saved the righteous redemption narrative that bogged down last year's Purpose album for a speech that set-up the title track. Yes, he had made mistakes but, as he explained to the crowd, he has found a purpose. (He gave a similar speech at his acoustic show at Danforth Music Hall last year.)
This narrative is obviously part of a strategy to help the teen pop heartthrob pull off that difficult feat of segueing into adult stardom. His fans have bought in, but has Bieber? Does it matter? An earlier bit summed up the vibe more honestly: he laid down and said he doesn't like getting out of bed in the morning. "I'm a seven-snooze-button kinda guy."
This seven-snooze-button kinda pop show ended with Bieber and his dancers performing dancehall-inflected pop hit Sorry under a waterfall. By this time he was wearing a Kurt Cobain shirt printed with a lyric from Nirvana's Dumb, a song about being happy with relatively little: "The sun is gone but I have a light."
The line felt more relevant to the the screaming audience than to the now-soaking-wet Bieber. It was just as well, because he took off the shirt and threw it to them as he walked offstage.
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