Photos and Review by Jeff Palmucci
Mika brought the first night of his Spinning Out Tour North America to the Citizens House of Blues on Lansdowne Street last Wednesday, and right out of the gate he was honest with the crowd: the show wasn’t quite finished yet. The whole production had been packed into three trucks, the House of Blues crew had helped pull it together, and not everything they’d planned actually made it onto the stage. He told the room flat out that the show would grow as the tour went on. Coming from a pop star, that’s a refreshingly unvarnished thing to say on opening night.
The Boston date was the launch of a run that takes the British-Lebanese singer through New York’s Pier 17, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Austin and points west over the next few weeks, his biggest North American headline tour in years.
Dilly Rowe Warms the Room
The opening slot went to NYC-based DJ Dilly Rowe, a London-raised turntablist whose cross-genre sets pull from hip hop, trap, Afrobeat, breaks, funk, house, reggae, dancehall, grime and UK garage (Rane Artists). It’s not the most obvious pairing on paper — Rowe’s club-floor sets aren’t exactly the same lane as Mika’s piano-pop catalog — but the room responded, and she earned a real round of applause on the way off. Worth noting too because Rowe is also opening Mika’s Pier 17 show in New York on May 2nd.
The Main Event
Mika opened with “Modern Times” and “Eleven,” then dropped into “Relax (Take It Easy)” and “Yo Yo” before working through the title track of the new tour, “Spinning Out.” From there it was the catalog hits: “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful),” “Popular Song,” “Lollipop” (preceded by a long, drawn-out intro that had the floor on edge before the chorus dropped), the French-language “Elle me dit,” and “Grace Kelly,” with “Happy Ending” closing things out (setlist.fm).
A few things stood out:
- He went up. Mika spent a chunk of the show dancing on the lid of his own piano. The instrument doubled as a prop for most of the night.
- He came down. At another point he stepped off the stage entirely, walking through the floor and dancing with the crowd — the kind of move that only really works in a room the size of House of Blues, and he took full advantage of it.
- The rainbow. During “Grace Kelly,” an inflatable rainbow erupted out of the top of the piano. It is exactly as ridiculous and exactly as fun as it sounds.
- Three suit changes. For a 16-song set in a club-sized room, that’s a lot of wardrobe.
- “Popular Song.” Mika built this one off the melody from “Popular” in Wicked (Stephen Schwartz / Wicked), but with completely different lyrics — and on a night where the crowd already knew every word, the rewrite landed hard.
A Show That Will Grow
So how did the first night feel? Honestly, tight. If Mika hadn’t told the room it was night one, you wouldn’t have guessed from the performance — the band was locked in, the catalog hit, and the audience was singing along from the first song. The only real tell was the stage itself, which wasn’t all the way there yet. Most notably absent: the hamster wheel that’s been a centerpiece of the European shows. By the time this tour gets to L.A. the full rig will presumably have caught up with the truck schedule.
The Spinning Out Tour rolls on through North America before heading back to Europe later in the year (mikaspinningouttour.com).