Hail Caesar

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/11/2019 (2148 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Canadian R&B star Daniel Caesar was last in Winnipeg, it was to play two sold-out shows at the Burton Cummings Theatre as a Winnipeg International Jazz Festival headliner in 2018.

He was still considered and “up and comer” then, but watching the tickets fly out the door as soon as they were released — not to mention the actual five-star performance a few months later — was a good indicator his next show in town would likely be upgraded to the roomier Bell MTS Place. 

Sure enough, after the surprise release of his sophomore full-length record, Case Study 01, earlier this year, the 24-year-old Caesar announced a tour that included a stop at Winnipeg’s arena. 

Fresh off of his fourth Grammy Award nomination Wednesday morning for Best R&B Performance for the track Love Again (which features American songstress Brandy) Caesar started things off with a dramatic flair, utilizing two very large screens to not only play videos of supplementary singer, but also to hide his band, who could only be seen as shadowed figures fading in and out of the background.

Most of the young crowd of 4,900 were on their feet immediately, swaying like corals in the ocean to the languid beats of Cyanide, Love Again and Restore the Feeling, three songs from his newest release.

Caesar, clad in a Winnipeg Jets jersey, manned the stage essentially solo. His backing singers mostly stayed far off to each side, and with his band behind the screens, it was just him, centre stage, holding his own. This is an incredibly difficult way to present an arena show for a few reasons, the most obvious of which is things can get really dull, really fast. But Caesar managed to stave off the boredom, mostly because he’s just such a strong and engaging vocalist.

The power of his music is in its intimacy, both in terms of content and presentation, and even in the vastness of the space, he was able to maintain that. Open Up — starting with a quiet Caesar bathed in a red spotlight with only his shadowed keyboard player backing him up — and a solo acoustic-guitar rendition of the short-but-sweet ballad Violet were particularly prime examples. 

Late in the set, Caesar dropped in a double-header of hits from his debut LP, 2017’s Freudian, which included Get You and perhaps the biggest fan favourite of the night, the sultry Best Part, the latter of which was peppered with many rather forceful proclamations of love hurled from the crowd in Caesar’s direction. Not long after, another Freudian standout, Blessed, grounded the energy of the room in a necessary way, the crowd at times almost too memesmerized by the sweetness of the song to even sing along. Almost.

Caesar rounded out his 70-minute main set with Superposition, and was boisterously beckoned back for a stunning encore which included Little Rowboat and Entropy, both of which he performed solo on acoustic guitar.

Watching Caesar grow into his potential as an artist with such grace is an inspiring thing; he’s one of the most buzzed-about talents in music right now, and Wednesday night he proved exactly why.

Toronto indie pop artist MorMor opened the night with a brief set which, sonically speaking, listened like the musical lovechild of Frank Ocean and the Cure; a little gloomy and a little sweet with deep grooves and bright synth and guitar riffs. To his credit, MorMor (Seth Nyquist) seemed to be his own draw, as evidenced by the very enthusiastic crowd, but, unlike during Caesar’s set, the arena setting caused a bit of the emotion and sensitivity of his music to get lost. 

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel