Review: Travis Scott leans into pyro, Auto-Tune and mayhem in circus-like St. Paul gig

When words like “earth-shaking” and “rabid response” are thrown around at a concert, it’s usually a good thing. Hearing those terms at Travis Scott’s sold-out show Saturday night at Xcel Energy Center, however, could make a lot of folks nervous.

The rapper’s knack for getting fans riled up had a catastrophic effect in 2021, when 10 audience members were crushed to death amid a chaotic crowd surge at his Astroworld Festival in his hometown of Houston.

Saturday’s date was his first in Minnesota since the tragedy, for which he was cleared of criminal charges last June. Extra security measures were put in place for the show, including added barricades and an unusually large fleet of security guards to keep fans from bumrushing the general-admission floor.

Thanks in large part to an elaborate and explosive stage production, Scott still managed to spark a next-level amount of enthusiasm and energy from the 15,000-plus fans. The rowdiest of them were the lucky ones who got on the floor, where mosh pits and crowd-surfing popped up throughout the 1¾-hour performance.

Dubbed the Utopia Tour Presents Circus Maximus — after his latest album, “Utopia,” and its Weeknd-accompanied single “Circus Maximus” — the concert was an even bigger spectacle than Scott’s amusement-park-themed 2018 gig at Target Center. He performed on a long in-the-round stage at the center of the arena floor that looked like a cross between a BMX training trail and the set of “Fraggle Rock” (look it up, kids).

The show literally was earth-shaking, too. Scott brought along a thunderous sound system with subwoofers whose booming vibrations may have been felt down in South St. Paul.

After three utterly lackluster opening rappers, Veeze, Skilla Baby and Babyface Ray — all of whom lazily relied on prerecorded backing tracks to do most of the rapping for them — Scott came out with an ultra-fiery delivery to match all the pyro blowing off around his long stage in opening songs “Hyaena” and “Thank God.”

The headliner, who’s 32, wore a tattered, all-black outfit with shoulder pads and long breezer shorts, looking like one of the helmet-less early 20th-century hockey players commemorated on the walls of the Xcel Center. He proceeded to run around the long stage like a track athlete, eventually climbing atop an elevated wall at the long end of the stage for the night’s first manic moment, “Modern Jam.”

For the next run of songs, including the oldies “3500″ and “Nightcrawler,” a few lucky fans were plucked out of the crowd to ride on a giant rock shaped like a head that hung on a moving track from the rafters. It looked fun for them, but the momentum dragged as they were lifted and strapped in. This also happened later in the show before “Can’t Say,” which turned into a breathless singalong for the crowd. So did “I Know?,” during which Scott let the fans take over on vocals altogether.

His otherwise frantically paced set — accompanied only by a DJ/hypeman, Chase B — had a lot of head-scratching moments alongside all the head-banging ones. For instance: Three costumed gorillas randomly walked out onstage midshow during “Circus Maximus” and just stood there like Snoop Dogg’s bodyguards.

Then near show’s end, Scott offered about seven or eight reprises of “Fe!n.” The hard-spitting anthem just kept starting over and over and over, probably making the fans who filled the arena with marijuana smoke wondering if they’d hit their one-hitters a little too hard.

As impressively overblown as the production and the booming sound system were, there was ultimately an underwhelming, is-that-all-there-is effect from Scott’s vocal performance.

Unlike similar one-man-show mega tours by Kendrick Lamar and Scott’s one-time mentor, Ye (Kanye West), the ascendant rapper never seemed to offer much personality or moments of pure drama under his mega-sized production. He was all-roar on vocals, except for when he was too heavily relying on Auto-Tune, like in the mellower dud “90210.”

The one exception was “My Eyes,” which Scott introduced as “the song that means the most” to him from his new album. It showed. The new tune built in urgency as Scott — and the crowd, too — passionately delivered such reflective lines as, “Stand on the stage, I give ‘em the rage / No turning it down, can’t tame it, can’t follow it.”

More meaningful moments like that will add a whole other kind of wow element to Scott’s big-wow concert scheme.