Review: Kanye West rocks above the fray on tour’s opening date

Opening night of Kanye West's "Saint Pablo Tour" proved to be as disorienting and disjointed as the album it promotes, but people will talk about the production for years.

The hip-hop icon spent the entirety of Thursday's two-hour show at Bankers Life Fieldhouse "flying" above the arena's floor on a transforming structure that erased the need for a conventional stage.

Riding a physical manifestation of the "Ultralight Beam" he describes on the opening track of 2016 album "The Life of Pablo," West delivered a groundbreaking visual achievement.

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Equal parts "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (for its abundance of bright lights) and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (for an amped-up crowd that's part of the show), the "Saint Pablo" tour is an eye-popping spectacle.

A-list acts Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, U2 and even Kanye's frenemy, Taylor Swift, have integrated aerial staging and stunts into recent tours. But West is the first to commit completely to working outside the expectations of what a concert stage is.

Until the show began, audience members had to guess about what they were looking at. A large video screen occupied the space almost always devoted to a conventional stage. Dominating the room was a scaffold-style grid of lights suspended about 20 feet above the floor. The full-court grid ran baseline to baseline, to apply basketball terms to the NBA arena.

Once the house lights went down, West came into view, seated on a square of the grid as it tilted toward his fans. Roughly the size of a boxing ring, the square moved up, down and across the room with West anchored by an elastic tether.

The floating stage occasionally brought West close to his fans, but it also left him isolated throughout the show. "Saint Pablo's" opening night featured no hypemen, special guests or DJ in close proximity to West.

With West's DJ stationed close to the ground, the show struggled with iffy transitions and false starts on a few songs -- understandable miscues on opening night.

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"Saint Pablo's" format allowed a mosh-pit free-for-all in the general-admission section, where eager fans raised arms and jumped to get as close as possible to West as he moved around the room.

Kanye was at his most Kanye when interrupting a song to chide security guards for establishing a perimeter beneath the square. "The whole concept is they're supposed to go wherever they want," West said of fans on the floor. But before the song ended, West called on security to help a female attendee being jostled below.

Despite the show's intriguing contrast of one man's isolation in a sea of people, it wasn't an evening of melancholy or soul-searching for West.

He came to rock. Heavy tunes performed at high volume fared best in this minimalist, experimental setting. The clanging metal of "Can't Tell Me Nothing" sparked an audience frenzy, and "Jesus Walks" transformed the room into the biggest trunk speaker you'll find.

On a personal note, West paused to issue an apology to Nike CEO Mark Parker after previously ripping the company that collaborated with the musician from 2007 to 2012. West also offered thanks to his current shoe partner, Adidas.

Oddly enough, the mid-air stage made it difficult to get a glimpse of West's footwear on Thursday. Otherwise, he wore black pants with red stripes at the sides and a sleeveless shirt topped by an oversize coarse-textured jacket accented by Mechanix gloves.

In true Kanye tradition, West lobbed a few comments toward his detractors. Surely to be quoted for weeks to come was his line, "I know they call me crazy sometimes; I just call them lazy all the time."

Work ethic aside, the "Saint Pablo" show is in need of refinement. Trimming a half hour of songs would be a good start. Twelve of Thursday's 31 songs appear on the hit-and-miss "Pablo" album, but the set list surprisingly lacked standout "Pablo" tunes "No More Parties in L.A." and "Ultralight Beam."

With an addition-by-subtraction approach, the tour's sounds can become as captivating as the visuals.

Set list

1. “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1” (performed twice in succession)
2. “Pt. 2”
3. “Famous”
4. “Pop Style” (verse West contributed to a Drake song)
5. “That Part” (verse West contributed to a Schoolboy Q song)
6. “Facts (Charlie Heat Version)”
7. “All Day”
8. “Mercy”
9. “I Don't Like” (West remix of a Chief Keef song)
10. “Black Skinhead”
11. “Power”
12. “Wolves”
13. “Feedback”
14. “Freestyle 4”
15. “I Love Kanye” 
16. “Can't Tell Me Nothing”
17. “FML”
18. “Blood on the Leaves” (three attempts before being abandoned)
19. “Jesus Walks”
20. “Amazing”
21. “Runaway”
22. “Devil in a New Dress”
23. “Flashing Lights”
24. “All of the Lights”
25. “Good Life”
26. “N----- in Paris” (song from Jay-Z & West collaboration “Watch the Throne”)
27. “30 Hours”
28. “Highlights”
29. "All Falls Down”
30. “Only One”
31. “Fade”

Call Star reporter David Lindquist at (317) 444-6404. Follow him on Twitter: @317Lindquist.