Tortoise played The Sinclair – 6/30
Post-rock vets Tortoise returned to Greater Boston for a late-June gig supported by affiliate supergroup Basic.
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I had to do a double-take in checking how long it’d been since Tortoise last came to town. Surely that was not a decade ago. Granted, I did catch the Chicago-originating instrumentalists play a pair of sets at Wilco’s Solid Sound fest to tide me over in 2019, but it was something of a shock that their last local headliner was way back in March of 2016. A lot has changed for me since then, and a little bit for Tortoise too.
For one, longtime guitarist Jeff Parker is sitting out this year of touring, the first sizable shakeup to the band’s core lineup in many years. They also have a new record – last October’s cerebral, electronic-leaning Touch – representing their first new music since that last Boston-area gig. But stepping into the world of the Tortoise live show, things immediately felt timeless.
The quintet’s stage setup – which situates a pair of drum kits at stage-front and covers most every available inch with gear – feels more like a peak into a studio or jam space than a traditional show. Members are constantly switching instruments and the vibe is relaxed. Consequently, the room had less of a performer/observer dynamic than a communal feel, like hanging out while the band did their thing on their terms.
The set pulled heavily from Touch, a record written and recorded with Parker but performed on tour with guest guitarist Jim Elkington (who you might recognize from his collaborations with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy). While Parker was missed, his replacement meshed seamlessly with the established foursome of multi-instrumentalists John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Dan Bitney on the new tracks and a range of selections from across the band’s three-decade discography.
Tortoise’s brand of post-rock exists in its own little corner of the loosely-organized genre, miles from the apocalyptic reckoning of a Godspeed or the crescendo-core of an Explosions in the Sky, deconstructing the rock band into a percussive and vibe-y style that’s evolved over the years while remaining distinctly theirs. They touched on all of its branches throughout the night, pivoting from the meditative new music to their 1998 opus TNT (including an ultra-groovy “Swung From the Gutters”) and digging all the way back to their ’94 debut to open the first encore with “Tin Cans & Twine.”
Opening the show was Basic, a group led by guitarist Chris Forsyth alongside Tortoise’s McCombs on bass and percussionist Mikel Patrick Avery (who’s worked with Natural Information Society and the Sun Ra Arkestra’s Marshall Allen, among others). The power trio’s hypnotic instrumentals made for a natural pairing and an ideal setup for the main event.
Check out photos from both sets below.
