Alicia Keys
- At the Air Canada Centre
- in Toronto on Wednesday
Everybody in showbiz knows it's smart to go out on a high note, but Alicia Keys went one better at Toronto's Air Canada Centre on Wednesday: Her performance peaked immediately after she left the stage.
That isn't just "glad to see her go" snark, either. Keys concluded her show with No One, an upbeat, reggae-tinged hit from 2007 that doesn't quite get its groove until the final chorus. She and her band teased it out perfectly, stretching out the verses so that the fans - who, after sitting through most of her 22-song set, were finally on their feet and shaking it - truly hungered for that "Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh/Everything's gonna be all right" payoff.
And when it came, Keys didn't push it. Instead, she retreated to the staircase at the back of the stage, and sank out of sight as her backing band milked the refrain. For a moment, it seemed like a cruel case of performance interruptus, but then she was back - not in person, but on the dozen or so video screens above the stage, seeming to emerge from a swirl of smoke like some exotic, blossoming flower. It was a perfect blend of sound and image, spectacle and message, ensuring that nobody made for the exits before her encore rendition of Empire State of Mind.
In a weird way, that finale felt all the more dazzling thanks to the multimedia muddle that preceded it. Keys seems to have envisioned her Freedom tour as part musical entertainment/part self-actualization seminar, and to that end many of the songs were larded with overconceptualized video and shouted bromides about believing in oneself.
Sometimes, the connection was clear, as when she sang Love Is Blind from between two huge, staring eyes, but mostly the imagery was mystifying. What was meant by illustrating Go Ahead, a bitter kiss-off to a lying lover, with Warhol-esque portraits of Gandhi and JFK? How was Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart improved by stuffing it with swarming birds and deafening synthesizers? Why couldn't the rest of Keys's show have been as sharply focused as the finale?