Donald Glover — aka Childish Gambino — makes you wait for it.
He’ll be quiet for a year or two and you’ll idly wonder occasionally where’s he been, but then suddenly he’ll announce or even surprise-drop a wildly elaborate new album or a new season of “Atlanta” or a low-key film that happens to star Rihanna or, as was the case this year, two albums, a fully booked world tour and an accompanying film that we still don’t know much about, and probably won’t until he wants us to. The elaborateness of the rollout is more than matched by the depth and complexity of the projects (not to mention the NDAs) — you could conceivably spend hours unpacking the references and meanings of the lyrics and music and staging and wardrobe and everything, or you can just enjoy it without thinking too hard about what you’re enjoying and why. He likes mystique and seemingly magic tricks and that makes it fun for fans too.
This latest round is the self-proclaimed “final” project from his Childish Gambino persona and involves his latest album, the excellent “Bando Stone and the New World,” a forthcoming film of the same name, a re-release of his equally excellent “3.15.2020” album — which he rush-released in the early days of the pandemic but has remixed, revamped and retitled “Atavista” — and, possibly most elaborate of all, this “New World Tour” that alighted at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center Monday for the first of a two-night stand.
The technology for the show is truly next-level — a performance in Connecticut over the weekend was canceled because the venue apparently couldn’t present it properly — and there were two stages and two tall vertical lighting towers on either end of the arena, as well as big cube-shaped video screens on either side of the stage and a long walkway leading out from the main stage; there was also a more conventional horizontal lighting rig and banks of laser lights that could pierce the air individually or shoot from one tower to another, forming perpendicular curtains of light. Most dazzling of all, above the end of the walkway, was a sort of giant crystal cloud comprised of a couple hundred icicle-like rods that lit up in synchronized sequences and rose and descended throughout the show. The audience was warned, by both a voiceover and later, Glover himself, not to look directly into the lasers or ultra-bright lights.
But that’s getting ahead of things. After an opening set from Willow (who brought her own elaborate stage set), the audience was entertained between sets not by music but by the sound of machinery — actually piped over the venue’s P.A. — as the crew put finishing touches on the set; at one point a welder in full gear did something to the middle of the stage that produced a shower of sparks while the ultra-bright lights above the stage flared. Glover took the stage promptly at 9:15, emerging in a sort of space suit, complete with helmet, surrounded by curtains of lights; he looked like a member of Daft Punk in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” But after performing the new album’s opening track, “ ,” he removed the suit and talked affably with the audience as he walked through the aisles to the front stage, telling everyone to enjoy themselves and, even though they’re New Yorkers, not worry too much about looking cool.
The set that followed was oddly, and deliberately, lopsided: The first half of the show consisted mostly of multi-genre songs from the new album, with a couple from “Atavista”; “Witchy,” his recent song with Kaytranada; and a pair that date back a decade or more. But after a sort of intermission — where he sang the new album’s ballad “No Excuses” into a video camera from beneath the stage while he told the crowd, “Now’s the time if you wanna light up that blunt or pop that edible, go to the bathroom or get a drink” — he then plunged straight into basically an opposite set, heavy on hip-hop tracks dating back to his early 2010s mixtapes and EPs for the “real fans” (as he said at least eight times). Glover performed 2012 song “One Up” was performed as a duet with his brother and screenwriting partner Steve G. Lover III; his galvanizing 2018 song “This is America,” which got a show-stopping workout during the encore of his last tour, only got a passing look.
Immediately after his brother left the stage, Glover surprised the audience by bringing out rising country star Shaboozey. The pair duetted on what Glover said was the live debut of the new album’s song “Dadvocate” before cruising straight into Shaboozey’s smash “Bar Song” — which probably made for a nice cap on a day when the young singer saw his first-ever hit begin a seventh week at the top of the Billboard Hot 100; Glover retreated to the back of the stage and let Shaboozey have the spotlight.
From there the show roared to its conclusion on another raft of early tracks before bringing things to a sultry end, inevitably, with his sumptuous 2016 R&B slowjam “Redbone,” before wrapping with the new album’s “Lithonia” — like SZA’s recent tour, the show ended with credits rolling on the video screen.
While visually and musically dazzling, the lopsided setlist (and surprise Shaboozey segment) did make for some uneven pacing for the show. To be fair, it’s not easy for such a multi-genre — not to mention multi-discipline — artist to satisfy an audience that sprawls over a 20-year musical career: For example, my friend on the right was dancing to the newer songs but didn’t know a lot of the older ones, while my friend on the left was the opposite. But it’s hard to imagine anyone left disappointed — and it’s equally difficult to imagine that this is the end of anything for Donald Glover the musician, except possibly retiring the Gambino persona that, as a 40-year-old man, he may feel he’s outgrown. Still to come is the “Bando” film — and whatever’s beyond that, we’ll be here for it.
