OFF: Porcupine Tree at Shepherd's Bush Empire

[Nick Medford]

Anyone else go to this? I know a number of boc-l'ers who were musing on
the idea of going, don't know if anyone did.

Got there rather late, caught the end of the support band's set (who were
they?) which closed with a faithful-but-dull cover of "Comfortably Numb"-
hardly an adventurous choice in this setting.

Seemed like a long wait for PT, I must give a mention to the extremely
minimalist hypnotic electro played through the PA - very effective, no idea
what it was. Finally Wilson and co. take the stage, I won't attempt to list
the whole set as much of it was unfamiliar to me, but overall impressions:
the loud instrumental passages are always good and sometimes quite brilliant:
the band play with tremendous power and- praise be!- manage to do this
without sacrificing clarity of sound. Aside from SW's excellent, varied lead
guitar work, I was particularly impressed by the bassist who really motored
some of the trancier passages along, and whenever the band when into
psychedelic freakout mode they showed great use of rhythm.

I'm still unconvinced by the lighter side of PT's music: in particular, an
"acoustic interlude" where they played "Pure Narcotic" and one other left
me pretty cold. I dunno: with that sugar-coated, West Coast-style stuff, I
can appreciate the skill and the way the songs are crafted, but it just does
nothing for me. In addition, Wilson isn't quite the songwriter he perhaps
imagines himself to be: after all, if you want to make it as a bard of angst,
there's some pretty tough competition to live up to. His lyrics aren't _bad_
exactly, but feel predictable, rarely inspired.

But the weaker moments were far outweighed by the good-to-great: a
pounding "Up The Downstair" with irresistible rolling bassline,  the
extarordinary guitar meltdown of "Russia On Ice", and a blistering extended
"Signify" were some of the highlights. Best of all was the remarkable
rendition of "Voyage 34" - faster and rockier than the original and totally
hypnotic.

So a fine gig overall, apparently it was being recorded for a live album so
expect that to be the next PT release.

One thing that struck me was that they do inhabit a world closer to the
mainstream than most other bands I would go and see. SW had a pop at
boy-bands, Britney Spears et al by way of introducing "Hate Song", and
while one couldn't argue with what he said, it struck me that one would
never hear Dave Brock bothering to make such obvious observations:
Hawkwind aren't even in the same cosmos as chart-fodder, it just wouldn't
be relevant. Still the crowd (average age rather less than at a HW gig!)
cheered anyway.

Enough... hope that was of interest to some.
--
Nick Medford