Review: Miguel at South Side Music Hall

Miguel generates a lot of heat and light when he performs, in both literal and metaphorical ways.

His upper body slick with sweat, his tattooed muscles gleaming in the spotlight as he croons — such a sight causes a frenzy of flashing smart-phone screens, desperate to memorialize the moment, peals of ecstatic (and largely feminine) screams filling the room like so much smoke.

But unlike many R&B performers in his position, there’s some substance to be had from the man born Miguel Jontel Pimentel, a core around which all the heat and light coalesces.

Over the course of his tight, 90-minute set at the South Side Music Hall Saturday, Miguel embraced the many sides of personality — lover; thinker; seducer; provocateur; dreamer — and fused them into a bracingly staged performance, one with arena-sized ambitions but scaled for the clubs Miguel finds himself headlining at this point in his ascendant career. (Saturday’s set was Miguel’s first in North Texas since a memorable opening turn for Drake two years ago at American Airlines Center.)

The 29-year-old Los Angeles native is touring behind his recently released third album, Wildheart. It’s a heady mix of pungent slow jams (the pious yet risque Flesh) and the powerful introspection found in earthy anthems like What’s Normal Anyway, seasoned with psychedelic rock and electronic flourishes.

Backed by a five-piece band and a wall-sized video screen, upon which was projected all manner of trippy images, Miguel reconciled these disparate impulses, tying them up with a distinctly New Age bow: “What is a wild heart?” he asked not long after appearing from the wings. “A wild heart is knowing exactly who you are and where you belong in this world. Dream big and you can go far. Curate the chaos — it’s up to you.”

A nice sentiment, and one which Miguel did his level best to embody.

A fiercely physical and intensely charismatic performer, Miguel frequently gazed at the front row like a panther sizing up its prey, deploying his limber tenor that could caress you or cut you or curl your toes (as it did at the climax of Do You ..., one of several astonishing vocal moments).

Miguel is often compared to Prince, and while it’s easy to see the common denominators — both are inordinately consumed by the pleasures of the flesh, as well as exerting total artistic control (everyone onstage Saturday was clad in white) — Miguel is very much his own man.

There’s more than a little hip-hop swagger in his songs, and, especially on Wildheart, a thoughtfulness more in line with D’Angelo’s blending of the booty and the brain than anyone else in modern R&B.

All that heat and all that light — it’s pointing the way forward for Miguel, who sang during the encore of capturing “moments in vibrant hues,” as apt a summation of his own sound as it was the theoretical love of which he sang.

This story was originally published July 26, 2015 at 1:54 AM with the headline "Review: Miguel at South Side Music Hall."