It was pretty weird when the Weeknd had a globe-crushing, ubiquitous hit with “Can’t Feel My Face,” a song about the numbing effects of snorting cocaine. The song spurred a lot of lyric-interpretation conversations, particularly among parents of the teen-pop set.
The Canadian singer released “Starboy,” his third full-length album, at the end of last year. The record has guest appearances from Daft Punk, Kendrick Lamar and Lana Del Rey, and there’s also input from pop songwriting/production mastermind Max Martin. The Weeknd still sounds like an AutoTuned Michael Jackson with retro-minimalist drum programming behind him. At times, like on “Rockin’,” the music has a chopped, clubby punch to it, is if it were being blasted out by an assembly line of robots. He makes counterintuitive musical hat-tips, like quoting the Romantics’ early ’80s hit “I Hear the Secrets that You keep” in “Secrets.”
The Weeknd still celebrates the somewhat predictable excesses of booze, drugs and sex, as on “Party Monster,” with its spooky, detuned backing-vocal tracks. There’s an effort to cultivate a sense of realness in the Weeknd’s new songs, but a listener is just as likely to enjoy the complete alternate-universe quality of the sounds and obsessions. Also on the bill are Rae Sremmurd, Belly and 6lack.
The Weeknd performs at Mohegan Sun Arena, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville, Friday, June 2, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $69 and up, 860-226-7711 and mohegansun.com.
