Live And In The Flesh
Portishead - October 7, 2011
Never in my wildest dreams had I ever expected that I would be lucky enough to see Portishead live in concert. The band very seldom tours, and had only played one show in North America since the late 90’s, so you can understand my disbelief when I heard that they were out on the road again. I didn’t really start getting into them until I hit college, so I had missed the boat by just a few years. I had heard of them coming through Ottawa in ’98, which would have been awesome to see them while they were in their prime. 2011 came around and we randomly found out that they were making their way through Montréal. This was their first North American visit in over a decade, and we knew we couldn't miss it!
The concert landed in the fall on a Friday night in October. It was a perfect reason for us to make our way into the city we had grown to love so much over the years. They had a back-to-back night scheduled for Toronto, but they landed at the beginning of the following week, and we were much more interested in getting out for a weekend in Montréal. We were just there a month prior for the Kyuss Lives! gig and we were pretty happy to be back. We made our way into the city, settled into our hotel room and headed towards downtown for the concert. The show was being held outside at the Old Port down in Old Montréal. You couldn’t have asked for a better setting for it. We needed to fuel up before the show so we hit up a restaurant not far from the park for a bite to eat and a couple of pre-drinks.
Ready to rock and roll, we made our way through the gates and were astounded by the amount of people that were in attendance. The show was just about to start, and there had to have been thousands of people there, just to see Portishead. If there was an opener, we had missed them! It didn’t look like they set a capacity at all to the park, as they just kept letting more and more people in as long as they were willing to pay. There was no way we were getting anywhere near close enough to the stage, so we just made the most of it! We headed over to the beer tent and the lineups were huge, but they seemed to be filing people through rather quickly. There wasn’t a limit on how many drinks you could take away or anything. If you could carry it, you could buy it! By the time we made our way up to the front of the line we decided to take advantage and try to carry at least three beer back with us a piece, as we didn’t want to be battling through that again throughout the remainder of the night.
It wasn’t long before the band made their way out onto the stage, followed by Beth Gibbons, easily one of my favourite female vocalists. Something about her just makes your hair stand on end, how could I miss out on hearing Portishead live? They started their set off with Silence and Nylon Smile, a couple of tracks from their latest 2008 release, Third. It didn’t take them long to take us way back to their debut album from 1994, Dummy, with Mysterons. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing, everything sounded perfect, and Beth, even though admittedly fighting some illness, was able to sound amazing all throughout the night, she was incredible live!
Portishead flipped between songs from Third, and Dummy for the first half of their set, covering Sour Times, Wandering Star, and Machine Gun, which had become my favourite song off of their latest. The combination of Over, Glory Box, and Chase the Tear, the track they had released for Amnesty International, was incredible. Following it up with Cowboys from their ’97 self-titled release couldn’t have gone any smoother. This show truly was unfolding like a dream as they covered each and every song that we wanted them to play.
Threads, the last song on their latest album closed their regular set as they left the crowd in awe. Did we really just see Portishead live? The crowd wouldn’t give up as everyone cheered for an encore performance. The band returned to the stage and started their two song encore off with Roads, suitably ending their fifteen song set off with We Carry On. There really aren’t words that you can use to describe the feeling that was in the air in Montréal that October night, but if magic is real, than this was it.