Live Review: The Weeknd, French Montana, Nav

Opening with a solid arsenal of expletive-laden rap lyrics, American hip hop artist French Montana (Karim Kharbouch) plus his band of three male backup vocalists and a DJ are pumped-up and unapologetic.

A regular collaborator with The Weeknd, Kharbouch is like the older brother who remains in the background just slightly beyond the avalanche of heightened celebrity attention that is already focused on his precocious younger sibling. But to demonstrate that he's no shrinking violet himself, Kharbouch takes the audience on a journey that rapidly riffs through his catalogue, like cramming in 'the best of French Montana' within a half-hour window. It produces mixed results. Just as the audience are repeatedly swept up in the climactic chants to the choruses with arms thrusting upwards as one, the track ends abruptly or shifts gear awkwardly to another track, which interrupts the building rhythm.

Canadian producer and rapper Nav fares a little better with a slick-but-truncated turn at the mixer, effortlessly carrying the rhythm along through samples from the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z.

In a nod to the title of his tour, The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) bursts onstage amid a long, droning hum, shocks of yellow and red lights, and a descending lighting rig akin to a landing UFO. He launches straight into Starboy but his words are drowned out by the rapturous capacity filled stadium. However, with Daft Punk's irresistible synth organ introduction and the hypnotic beats, Starboy's remastered '80s inflections are less opening gambit than pure surrender.

The lighting rig raises and rotates slowly overhead to reveal itself as a large triangular truss frame that doubles as Tesfaye's mechanical shadow, tilting at dramatic angles to illuminate his diminutive form as he skips and dances underneath. An inconspicuous three-man band tucked away in the back right corner aptly amplifies the rhythm through drums and bass guitar. He combines a couple of tracks into one - just to shake up his repertoire slightly - Tell Your Friends/Die For You and an especially emotive Secrets/Can't Feel My Face.

"Some of you may know this," he says cheekily as fractal grey spotlights wash the stage amid the darkened auditorium before he launches into Earned It (the lead single from the Fifty Shades Of Grey soundtrack), replete with a stunning, sustained vocal harmony at the end.

French Montana appears midway through to perform his own signature hit Unforgettable while Tesfaye slips away backstage for a quick break. A duet here would have been fantastic!

With his numerous collaborations, it is wishful thinking that the likes of Drake (Crew Love) and Belly (Might Not) could have popped in for a cameo with Tesfaye. He still performs energetically and with admirable passion on his own, but the sound and lighting crew tries to supplement this by firing off some smoke cannons along the front of the stage and projecting a continuous stream of abstract images and video clips on a fragmented video screen on the stage's back wall. And, of course, that huge triangle overhead that looks worryingly, at times, like it might pivot just a fraction too low and behead a band member or two. All these familiar gimmicks to magnify onstage presence are a long-time staple of big international tours and most of crowd members gleefully lap it up.

A one-song encore would leave us feeling shortchanged in any other performance, but if it happens to be The Weeknd's The Hills - with a rousing, extended singalong chorus - it feels momentarily like the best Christmas gift ever. We extol jubilantly as we decamp home on a high.