OAKLAND — Alt-pop singer-songwriter Melanie Martinez has broken out of her cocoon and entered her diva phase. That’s true both in terms of exposure to her music—her Trilogy Tour is her first arena trek—and metaphorically, as in the story she tells in her music and on stage; she’s at one point killed and returns as another otherworldly being.

It’s a story that Martinez has been telling in parts for a decade, over her three albums—most recently, 2023’s Portals. This semi-personal story began with 2015’s Cry Baby and continued on 2019’s K–12.

It includes the theme of overcoming a reincarnation; there’s a lot to it. And at the Trilogy Tour tour stop at Oakland Arena, the second date on her tour, it appeared as though her fans knew what was coming, as if they were watching “Hamilton” for the seventh time. True to her previous performances in the Bay Area, including her Portals World Tour stop at Bill Graham Civic last June and at Outside Lands in 2021, the show was heavy on narrative, this time focusing on the events of all three albums together: Girl (Cry Baby) is born and grows up in a troubled home, discovers her superpowers, is confused by love, gets shot with Cupid’s arrow, dies and comes back as a fairy-like creature.

In concert, this last Portals act pulls heavily from ballet “Swan Lake.” There’s even an orchestral interlude with a male and female dancer dancing over a lake of fog.

Despite Martinez performing with a full band—which flanked a large stage that was ringed with faux mossy vegetation and jutted out into the floor seats—the show was more of a theater production than a music concert. This proved to be a double-edged word for Martinez, like the one with which she pranced around the stage during the poppy “BATTLE OF THE LARYNX,” where she pretended to battle an animated dragon on the video screen behind her—a battle that was eventuated with plumes of flame criss-crossing the stage itself. The show worked in that the songs were extremely cohesive to the narrative, from album to album. At the same time, so many similar-sounding songs would start to overload an attendee not invested in the story.

The concert itself stayed true to the source material. Every song was paired with visuals that advanced the Cry Baby story, starting from birth and early adolescence. For much of the first two acts, Martinez was positioned on one of two lifts at the back of the stage so that she could appear to be part of the scenery on the screen behind her. For example, during the opener, “Cry Baby,” it appeared as though she was positioned in a rocking bassinet inside a nursery. During “Carousel,” she rode a giant rabbit as the carousel spun on the screen.

But this innocent-looking story soon grew scary, with her dollhouse taking on an ominous green glow (“Sippy Cup”) and a creepy smiling doll (“Play Date”). While she left her perch a couple of times early in the show, such as when she sang while chopping at heart balloons with a pink axe during “Pity Party,” spending so much time away from front of the stage would typically be a questionable move.

Melanie Martinez, however, had a full troupe of dancers who took turns taking up the stage in her place. And the packed house didn’t seem to mind. The room, especially in the beginning, reached staggering volumes, and whenever Martinez held her microphone out to the audience, thousands of voices rang out in unison, sometimes even drowning her out after the mic went back toward her.

The second act moved the action to a boarding school setting. Martinez looked like she was on a seesaw with one of her dancers during “Class Fight,” and during “Show & Tell” she was connected to a couple of wires that, in conjunction with the video behind her, made her look like a marionette, breaking free from her restraints at the end. The highlight of this act came during “Nurse’s Office,” when she sang while prostrate on a gurney that her dancers spun around. The from-above camera angle made the scene.

Then, in the emotional climax between second and third acts, Cupid appears on the screen and shot Martinez, who fell and disappeared through a trap door. And this set up the evening’s longest act and also the most recent one: Portals. On her previous tour, Martinez performed exclusively in her four-eyed nymph mask. At this show, attendees got to see the real Martinez first, which is probably for the best. Despite that, the singer remained in character the entire night. There was no “Hello Oakland and thanks for coming” and little other chitchat.

Possibly because the material is freshest in her mind, the third act was the strongest of the night. It was also where Martinez was finally (mostly) broken free from the video screen and began working the large stage, even joining her dancers at times, such as on “DEATH” and “SPIDER WEB” (bonus points to the dancer in the giant fly costume, who overshadowed Martinez’s butterfly here).

Other highlights included the dramatic “TUNNEL VISION” and “FAERIE SOIRÉE.” There was no shortage of props at the concert, and the latter song featured giant inflatable swaying mushrooms.

Quebec band Men I Trust preceded Martinez with an eight-song set of moody chillwave and synth-pop. Singer-guitarist Emmanuelle Proulx’s voice was like thick molasses, while the band, which included guitarist Jessy Caron and keyboardist Dragos Chiriac, provided soulful textures. Following an instrumental intro with a slick guitar solo, the band began slowly picking up the pace with the laconic “Show Me How,” which felt like waves crashing on a shoreline before being swept away.

Other tracks recalled Massive Attack in their electronic approach. The band concluded with the bluesy “Seven” and its most uptempo tune of the night, the industrial-sounding “Billie Toppy.”

Chicago garage rock quartet Beach Bunny opened the show with a burst of lo-fi guitar-led songs. Singer-guitarist Lili Trifilio, the band’s driving force, powered through the grungy “Cuffing,” melodic and uptempo tunes like “Sports” and “Oxygen” and songs that included elements of Afropop noodling on “Dream Boy.”

Early arriving fans, of which there was a significant amount, sang along with Beach Bunny’s two best-known songs, “Prom Queen” and “Cloud 9.”

 

 

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter. Follow photographer Matt Pang at Twitter.com/mattpangs.