Last night I travelled through to Glasgow to see Porcupine Tree (the best band in the world that no-one’s heard of) at the Carling Academy. It was the third time I’ve been to a gig by this band in 16 months, and they just seem to get better and better (see my previous blog posting ‘Porcupine Tree‘).
They are at the end of a long worldwide tour, and the show they are putting on now is very well-practiced, polished, and musically very tight (back in April they were a bit nervous and made a few mistakes). Last night, they were awesomely impressive, and the guitars were loud and heavy.
Gavin Harrison’s drumming, in particular, is just mental – you can forget headbanging to Porcupine Tree songs, the drumbeats are just too intricate!
The long track Anesthetize was the standout part of the night for me, but also amazing were some of the new tracks from their Nil Recurring EP. Some songs, like Halo, are way better live than the album versions.
The only thing I didn’t like about the night was that it was quite hard to hear Richard Barbieri’s keyboards – the drums and guitars seem to have won when it came to the live sound mix.
Lesley has written about the gig on her blog here.
Geoff Tipps
I’ve always thought that the Carling Academy has absolutely terrible acoustics and the sound just bounces around the high ceiling.
Almost as bad as the SECC.
Lesley
Yeah, I’ve heard similar criticisms of the Carling, but I have to say that they must have sorted something out as the sound was excellent last night. We were there with our muso mate Ali, who has played drums in numerous types of bands for years – he is THE most critical person when it comes to gig sound / acoustics and he was more than satisfied, so it must have been good!
Absolutely amazing gig. One of the very best I’ve ever been to.