OFF: Porcupine Tree at Shepherd's Bush Empire

[Nick Medford]

In message <Pine.LNX.4.21.0106081916270.7767-100000 at chiark.greenend.o
rg.uk>, Jon Jarrett <jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> writes
>
>        Ach, they did this sort of singles hour bit the last time I saw
>them. Porcupine Tree's singles, bar the last two which were OK, are
>generally nothing special. Sticking them all together in the set while
>Steven jangles away on an acosutic and Colin and Richard stand with their
>arms folded only goes to emphasise this to my way of thinking, I wish
>they'd stop. In fact I wish he'd stop writing them and get back to the
>exploratory psych.

Absolutely. He is far better at freakout music than he is at writing songs.
Unfortunately I don't think he himself sees it that way. To be fair, I don't
think many of his excitable young fans would agree with me or thee either.

> But enough of that. I do rather like _Lightbulb Sun_,
>more so than _Stupid Dream_.

I beg to differ. I hadn't heard LS prior to the gig and bought it afterwards as
I thought the songs from it sounded pretty good live. But I think it's by far
the weakest PT album: the title track is great... perhaps the most successful
fusion of psych and pop they've achieved, and the second half of Russia On
Ice is very fine too, but everything else is average to downright crap IMO:
"The Rest Will Flow" and "Where Would We Be" are two of the most
embarrassingly sterile overblown neo-prog efforts I've heard in a long while.
And as for "Last Chance..", fusing a lightweight love song with samples from
the Heaven's Gate cult leader is just crass. It just doesn't work and he ends
up looking like a schoolboy trying to shock.

Whereas "Stupid Dream" has grown on me...  there are some excellent
tracks: Even Less, Slave Called Shiver, Baby Dream and Tinto Brass are all
among their best. The weakest track is "Pure Narcotic" and even that is
considerably better than some of the Lightbulb Sun stuff.... IMHO of course.

The other thing is that the mournful lyrics and vocals, which were starting
to wear a bit thin on Stupid Dream, blossom into total self-parody on LS.
To call it sixth-form angst is almost too kind.

However the next studio PT album will allegedly be darker, stranger and
have more guitars, so it should be a good 'un.
--
Nick Medford