I knew Ariana Grande enjoyed wearing cat ears, but I had no idea how deep the woman goes with the cat ears. I can't remember seeing her head without a set Wednesday night at American Airlines Center, whether they were crystal, sparkly, lacy or light-up.
Actually, it was her fans who wore the light-up kind — technologically advanced devices that hoards of 'em picked up at the merch booth. Their lights could be controlled wirelessly by production during the show, effectively turning ordinary concertgoers into living, fidgeting visual effects.
Touches like that made the Honeymoon Tour feel like a surreal, albeit tightly choreographed pop-diva dream. Take this thing to Vegas.
The 21-year-old Floridian performed in front of a full house with precision and frequent vocal perfection throughout her 90-minute set on Wednesday. She was the crown jewel among many dancers, a serviceable live band, a DJ-hype man and a spare-no-expenses video backdrop.
Grande and her cast opened with "Bang Bang," during which the singer performed Jessie J's and Nicki Minaj's verses as capably as her own. But she saved the real drama for her entrances. During the lovelorn 2014 tune "Best Mistake" she crooned from a flying cloud. For the older "Right There," Grande entered atop a fancy moving chandelier.
One particular "scene" during the show borrowed heavily from Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby movie, flapper costumes and gold everywhere. The Grande time machine also took us to laser-lit modern nightclubs during "All My Love" and "Break Free."
Despite the many pop-show bells and whistles at her disposal, the young star did take a few moments to stay still and belt. Those chill-inducing runs on "My Everything" confirmed her status as one of the finest pure vocalists of her generation.
While Grande has the singing and even the dancing down pat, she could work on her between-song banter. Beyond the "how you feelin' Dallas?" calls and "I love you guys so much" warm fuzzies, she didn't reveal much in her limited comments to the crowd.
There was one endearingly eccentric moment, when Grande performed with a pair of musical MiMu gloves, a wearable vocoder-and-synth instrument developed by the pop artist Imogen Heap. Heap appeared in a video intro explaining how the gloves work, and Grande then used them on stage to transform her own voice into warm chords.
It'd be nice to see Grande do more of that stuff in her future albums, but for now it seems she's laying out a foundation of radio hits that serve their enthusiastic audience well.
During the sensual seduction of "Love Me Harder" and the clever rejection of "Break Your Heart Right Back," fans followed Grande's every move. At times, their collective pre-teen screams nearly frightened me. And, naturally, the brassy smash "Problem" served as the showstopper.
Whether or not the star chooses to release more music this year, the Honeymoon Tour should be in solid shape when it comes back to AAC on October 11. I do hope she'll continue to put out new stuff and play around with styles, just to keep the gears turning and the cat ears burning.
