This was my fourth time seeing Porcupine Tree, and they just keep getting better. One thing that helped was that everyone was actually in assigned seats; the last two shows were at the Nokia Theater, which is mostly standing room. (I happened to have a fabulous seat in the front mezzanine - and no one tall was sitting in front of me! LOL.)
The group opened with "What Happens Now?," from their new EP (Nil Recurring; see my review), a stunning, dark, extended, multi-textured composition, which literally mesmerized the audience into almost total silence. It was a tour de force opening, one of the best I've ever seen. They then dipped into a number of albums, including the most recent, Fear of a Blank Planet (Anesthetize, Way Out of Here, Sleep Together), Deadwing (Deadwing, Lazarus, Halo, Open Car), In Absentia (Blackest Eyes, Sound of Muzak, plus (I'm pretty sure...) Wedding Nails and Prodigal/3), Stupid Dream (Even Less, A Smart Kid) and Signify (Dark Matter). They also did Cheating the Polygraph from Nil Recurring. (Ironically, I had only listened to Stupid Dream for the first time the night before the concert, and was hoping they would do Even Less, which they did.)
As usual, the band was that seemingly impossible combination of loose and tight at the same time, and Wilson was far more relaxed (and genuinely humble!) than I had ever seen him. The sound mix was superb (once they quickly ironed the kinks out of Wilson's muddy mic and a too-reverberating bass guitar), and the light show was extremely tasteful, and perfect for the show.
The opening act, HeadFake, was a duo comprised of the bassist (Doug Wimbish) and drummer (Will Calhoun) of Living Colour. The music was a combination of metal, electronica, trance, and bits and pieces of rock, jazz, et al. Wimbish had a set-up that allowed his bass to sound like a guitar (for soloing), and a computer that generated either under-rhythms or bass patterns (while he soloed). Calhoun kept the beats, ranging from simple 4/4s to complex polyrhythms. Although the music itself was not bad (though the format became repetitive after a while), it would probably have come across better if Wimbish were not such a "theatrical" player, and both of them had not done the "New York!" thing to death; i.e., had they presented their music with a bit more "decorum" (not necessarily the stoicness of Fripp, but not the excessiveness of, say, Axl Rose), I (and others) might have enjoyed it a bit more. Still, despite the theatrics, most of the audience gave them the benefit of the doubt, and HeadFake successfully took them in.
All in all, a great evening at the Beacon, with PT giving one of the best concerts I have been to in recent memory. 4.5 stars!
Peace.
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PT - Beacon Theater - NYC - 10-13-07
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