Tortoise ~ June 18, 2007

For those who might be uninitiated regarding Tortoise, I lifted this description from their Wikipedia page: Tortoise's almost entirely instrumental music defies easy categorization, and the group gained significant attention from their early career. The members have roots in Chicago's fertile music scene, playing in various indie rock and punk groups. Tortoise was among the first American indie rock bands to incorporate styles closer to Krautrock, dub, minimalism, electronica, and various jazz styles, rather than the standard rock and roll and punk that had dominated indie rock for years.

Some have cited Tortoise as being one of the prime forces behind the development and popularity of the so-called "post-rock" movement. Others, however, have criticized Tortoise's music as being derivative of progressive rock.

Arriving a half hour before the doors opened it appeared that the crowed might be rather thin as there was no line at all out front of The Bluebird at all. I decided to take advantage of the nice evening and cheap micro brew prices across the street and headed to the Goosetown Tavern's patio until the doors opened. At 8:30 a few of us filed in and waited for Lichens to start (see my review below). I snagged a prime second tier rail spot right in the middle of the floor. Thoughts of poor audience turnout soon were put aside as a really nice size crowd began to showup right before Tortoise's set.

Tortoise came out about 10:20 and proceeded to wow us with an incredibly tight set of tunes. One thing really interesting about these guys is they are all multi-instrumentalists and they tradeoff on almost every song. They actually have two drum kits setup up face to face and on several of the songs have duel drumming. Three of them handled the kits. All the members played their two sets of xylophones eventually and all of them played some sort of keyboard during the course of the show as well. Three of them traded off on guitars and basses too. One could tell they really enjoined playing together as there was tons of grins at each other and they totally fed of the crowd's exciting reactions. We coaxed them out for two encores...they were extremely deserving! Throughout the show they had projected images which were mostly moving abstract, contemporary painting type of visuals...very fitting and not too distracting.

This was my first time seeing them live in person and it will not be my last. It's amazing how their live music grooves, because on CD a lot of the tunes don't really come off that way, but live they seem to improve the studio versions somehow that makes things even better...highly recommended if one wants to see a very tight band who's music isn't so ordinary, highly creative, but at the same time somewhat accessible.

I have a photo slideshow with music recorded that night on my YouTube Station (here).

Also, I have the complete set of photos on my Photosite (here).