Turkey, stuffing, pumpkin-pie, darkly hypnotic and at times otherworldly music - this one surely went down as a damn fine Thanksgiving weekend for those who added Portishead to the mix this year.
A brief but satisfying affair - encore included, the show ran 85 minutes - the whole experience was, well, an experience.
First off, there was the impressive - though never show-stealing - video backdrop. Being made the most of - and thus used to accentuate the atmospheric, ethereal music - throughout the show said backdrop displayed everything from distorted, overlapping feeds of individual band members to, for the folky and lullaby-like "The Rip", fittingly choppy and hand-drawn storybook-style animations.
As cool and mind-blowing as screens can be though (and as obvious as this statement is), the performances make or break a concert - the show passed with flying colors, literally. Working with a strong setlist - which leaned heavily on tracks from the exceptional '08 LP Third - the Bristol-based British act held the appreciative near-capacity crowd.
However (and feel free to take this as pure nitpicking), the more avid fan could argue there wasn't enough attention paid to the band's super-underrated '97 LP Portishead. An unnerving start-to-finish listen, and perhaps the trio's most adventurous work yet, the record certainly deserves props. Put alongside classic, crowd-pleasing grooves like "Mysterons" though, the seeming lack of recognition's understandable.
Speaking of "Mysterons" - from the band's Mercury-prize winning '94 debut Dummy - some of the songs actually came off better in the live setting. In particular, the aforementioned "Mysterons" was made all the more hypnotic - and even epic - by an otherworldly, almost space-rock solo from guitarist Adrian Utley.
As good as the solo was though, the song that benefited the most from a live-rethinking was the head-nodding "Wandering Star", which found the core trio of Utley, mesmeric singer Beth Gibbons, and multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow sans touring band-members, and performing a stripped-down rendition of the catchy cut.
Working with just the tune's throbbing bass, spectral guitar, and Gibbons' endlessly emotive voice, the low-key, powerful performance showed Portishead at their most intimate, immediate, and organic - and it, like the show itself, was nothing less than moving.
Here's hoping it'll be slightly less than a decade this time before the band returns.
Setlist:
- Silence
- Nylon Smile
- Mysterons
- The Rip
- Sour Times
- Magic Doors
- Wandering Star
- Machine Gun
- Over
- Glory Box
- Chase The Tear
- Cowboys
- Threads
Encore:
- Roads
- We Carry On
Jacob Goguen - Jacob Goguen is a professional journalist with an extensive background in the arts. He has acted in short films, as well as with Young ...
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