Chris asked if I'd been too traumatised or outright disappointed to actually blog this. We met up with Sean for Porcupine Tree, at the Hammersmith Odeon, with high hopes of an evening of florid arpeggiating, hopelessly overblown musicianship, wildly optimistic conceptualising, time-signature-changes coming thick and fast, and an overall picture that would make Tales From Topographic Oceans look like Closer.Crashing disappointment broke over us, though.
No solos. None to speak of, anyhow. How can you be in a prog band and not pepper your songs with solos, for crying out loud?
Woeful slo-mo, out-of-focus video montages of vague malaise. The sort of thing that made us want to see Meatloaf's masterpiece of histrionics, backlighting and windmachines, "I'll Do Anything For Love". Well, it made me want to see that, any road up.
No pretension. Where is prog without pretension, I ask you?
The audience looked like the uncles of the audience we were expecting. The band issued an announcement demanding no photos or videoing, and, get this, the audience did as they were told.
If there's one thing that prog doesn't need, it's real feelings. The singer's pinched employment-consultant's soul was all over this gig like a rash.
We admired the drummer for all the technical ecstacy he provided, but the poor bugger is in a band that has read the manual from cover to cover, and has learnt all the requisite tricks, but has no idea why.
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