slow and steady

I had been tossing the idea around of going to the Tortoise / Daniel Lanois show, but wasn't quite sure of how it would all play out, since Lanois was slated as the headliner, Toroise the opener. As I agonized over this simple quandary of whether I should go or stay, I happened to win a pair of passes which pretty much made up my mind for me. Steph M was cool enough to make some dinner before we all headed over to the show. Tortoise, currently a five-piece, opened up with a solid set of their standard instrument rotationalisms, during much of which boasted two drummers, and the best use of xylophones since Frank Zappa.



And as it turns out, Tortoise was actually Daniel Lanois' backing band for this tour, so we essentially got a second set of tortoise with the neil youngish-ish stylings of mr. lanois (probably best known for his production work along side Brian Eno for U2), which was mostly cool, especially the songs with the pedal steel. The singing was kept to a minimum, except for a handful of solo tracks towards the end of the set which were a bit of a snoozer, but otherwise it was a great night of music.

You can download the whole show, with the help of your favorite bittorrent client, with a simple clicky.

-setting my face to the hillside-