I just got back from seeing Porcupine Tree at a downtown club. This is the first gig in a US tour promoting their new album, Fear of a Blank Planet. The band were a bit jet-lagged, and ran into some problems with the computer that sequences the video clips on the projector; while the drummer was rebooting the computer, Steven launched into a wonderful, unscheduled performance of Trains from In Absentia. More hardware problems, please! They actually played two other tracks from that album – Blackest Eyes and Gravity Eyelids – and it seemed as if they were carefully including a few familiar, heavy pieces to balance the relatively mellow sounds of the new songs.
So how did the new album go over? They played all six tracks, accompanied by powerful – but occasionally repetitive – video sequences. (I actually expect Steven Wilson to turn his hand to film direction before too long.) I really like the album – I’ve been listening to it a lot over the last week, and I don’t think there’s a single weak track. However, not everything that sounds good on CD translates well to a concert setting, and neither Anesthetize nor Sentimental worked as well as I’d hoped, for quite different reasons. Anesthetize is really a 17:42 suite, and while the recorded version flows nicely from segment to segment, the live performance sounded somewhat disorganized. More seriously, the subtle vocals for Sentimental were lost in the live mix, and it’s not clear how to retrieve them.
Apart from these two issues, it was a great concert. The other new songs were really strong, and they were accompanied by a good mix of older numbers, some obscure (Half-Light, from the Lazarus single), and some instantly recognized (Lightbulb Sun, Sever and Open Car, for instance). The crowd was appreciative, patient during the technical glitches, and seemed to have a good time.
The opening act was 3, a new band to me. The first few tracks left me cold (terribly derivative – Tool does this stuff so much better), but later on they seemed to find their groove and displayed some impressive musicianship.