Porcupine Tree, the 20-year-old Progressive Rock band from England that is just now attracting a big following in the U.S., played the venerable and gorgeous Radio City Music Hall on September 24 to an enthusiastic, near-sell-out crowd of mostly white males in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Rush fans from New Jersey were particularly well represented.
The three-hour show started off with a soft acoustic set and slowly grew to a tidal wave of sound and imagery. Porcupine Tree is a band that takes video seriously as an art form. Throughout the entire second half of the show, the back wall of the stage functioned as a gigantic video screen, displaying haunting and intelligent visual art that resembled more cinema than video. The video broadened the live experience tremendously and in a way that somehow didn't overpower the music. The experience was still primarily sonic.
And what a sonic experience Porcupine Tree is. They're not musical geniuses by any stretch. (No one will mistake lead songwriter Steven Wilson for Jimmy Page.) They are sometimes quite exceptional, however. At their best, Porcupine Tree builds walls of sound that are crushing in their impact and swirling guitar-and-keyboard rhythms that take on the quality of tornadoes. They get so heavy at times that their style is often described as Progressive Metal instead of Progressive Rock.
Yet the band also has a pronounced soft side, which they are determined to keep on the front burner. Most of the band's fans probably favor the heavy numbers, but the band is as committed to soft ballads as sonic monsters.
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