UK prog-rock band Porcupine Tree came to the historic Radio City Music Hall on Friday September 16, their first show back in NYC following the band’s 12-year hiatus. In fact, it was almost twelve years since they last played the NYC area at Radio City on Sept. 24, 2010. Given Porcupine Tree’s long hiatus and new music being teased during the pandemic, a great deal of anticipation was built up among the crowd going into the show.
Porcupine Tree began as a solo project of Steven Wilson who eventually moved it to a full band setting in the early 90s. After touring in support of the band’s 10th studio album The Incident in 2010, Wilson shifted gears to work on solo recordings, leaving the band’s future in question. The June 2022 release of Closure/Continuation excited fans with the chance to see Porcupine Tree on this current summer/fall tour, though there is still uncertainty if this is the band wrapping up on a high note, or a sign of more great things to come.
The band’s long two-set show was filled with fan favorites with the entirety of their new album scattered throughout both sets. Set one kicked off with a favorite, “Blackest Eyes,” before diving into three from Closure/Continuation which Wilson joked afterward about being the challenging part of the set. The second set featured the title track off the band’s 2006 album Fear of a Blank Planet and the extended “Anesthetize,” which unfortunately for the many folks donning Rush shirts did not feature Alex Lifeson on stage (Lifeson had contributed guitar lines on the studio recording). The show wrapped up with a pleasantly long encore ending with “Trains,” which Wilson commented that he had wished that would have been the single from In Absentia even though it wound up becoming one of Porcupine Tree’s most popular songs.
The core of Porcupine Tree is Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri, and Gavin Harrison, with original bass player Colin Edwin not returning. For the Closure/Continuation tour Porcupine tree enlisted touring band members Randy McStine from NYC and Nate Navarro from Boston.
From start to finish, there were no lulls in the band’s performance. Compared to Porcupine Tree’s live shows in the late 2000s the band was just as engaged with each other, the music, and the audience as back then.There seemed to be a collective electricity among the audience fueled by the legacy that Porcupine Tree left for themselves before their hiatus. With the band’s future still unclear, hopefully it will fall on the “Continuation” part of the Closure/Continuation album title.
Porcupine Tree Setlist
Set 1: Blackest Eyes, Harridan, Of the New Day, Rats Return, Even Less, Drown With Me, Dignity, The Sound of Muzak, Last Chance to Evacuate Planet Earth Before It Is Recycled, Chimera’s Wreck
Set 2: Fear of a Blank Planet, Buying New Soul, Walk the Plank, Sentimental, Herd Culling, Anesthetize, Sleep Together
Encore: Collapse the Light Into Earth, Halo, Trains
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