A smaller venue is still a big night for P!nk at Little Caesars Arena – The Oakland Press

One might think that performing at Little Caesars Arena would be a bust for P!nk after he set an attendance record at Comerica Park nearly 14 months ago.

Barely.

The smaller venue only made the pop star’s singing, dancing and acrobatic extravaganza on Monday, October 14 – the first of two nights at the arena – more intense and at times even more intimate. This stop on their Trustfall Tour, an extension of last year’s Summer Carnival Tour, whose 45,000 attendees were the largest reserved-seat concert ever at Comerica Park, didn’t so much shrink P!nk’s output as scale it down, which feels conveyed just as big as in the stadium, but even more effectively.

At one point that was even more true than during the encore of “So What,” when P!nk flew into the air – not for the first time during the hour and 55 minute show, but this time she was strapped into a harness, with which she could fly up to the upper deck and around the diameter of the arena. It was certainly impressive in the vastness of Comerica, but on Monday the stunt was even more direct to a near-capacity Little Caesars audience that once again marveled at P!nk’s daring.

The feast for the eyes barely stopped throughout the night as P!nk (née Alecia Moore) and her ensemble of five musicians, three backup singers, and ten dancers/antennas – still promoting her 2023 album “Trustfall” – hit the beach on stage. “Soul Train” dance lines and a trampoline routine during “Trustfall” and “Blow Me (One Last Kiss).” P!nk started the night from above, “dropping in” via a bungee cord from a large pair of lips above the stage to say “Get the Party Started.” During “Turbulence,” she was lifted above the audience near the center of the arena, followed by one of the dancers. “It’s a carnival!” she explained at the start of the show.

No joke.

However, the smaller venue allowed P!nk – who wore a dozen different looks on the night – to add a more personal touch to Monday’s show. She was able to squeeze some flesh more easily and also comment on the concertgoers’ costumes – and there were a lot of them, including some gang concepts, running around the arena. She was also able to hear more of what was being shouted at her, including a Jewish New Year greeting to which she responded in Hebrew, and was generally more talkative and exchanging – whether it was gratitude for a career as a “45-year-old” “Old Person, the Jersey “carries to work, trapped in the mind of a 12-year-old” to conversations about guitarist Justin Derrico’s courtship of one of P!nk’s dancers when he first joined the band 18 years ago.