On the Road Again
Live Review

Portishead
The Warehouse, Toronto
Dec. 7, 1997

If ever there was band suited to 3 a.m. last-call sets in claustrophobic dives where the entrance is obscured by dumpsters in dark alleyways, it's Portishead. Unfortunately, such a scenario was tossed aside when the U.K. band visited Toronto, as Portishead was forced to make the concrete nightmare known as the Warehouse (which, amazingly, is actually considered a legitimate concert venue in this town) seem intimate; a morgue has nicer ambiance. The after-hours vibe just wasn't going to happen either; on-stage by 9:30, off an hour later, Portishead seemed like it was in a hurry to get back to the hotel to catch an episode of...I dunno - you know as well as I do that there's no good TV on late Sunday night.

But it was what Portishead did with those 60 minutes that ultimately mattered. The evening's set-list could not be faulted, as the band set the mood with the best tunes on its self-titled second release ("Half Day Closing," "Over") and gradually sneaked in the hits from the debut Dummy ("Glory Box" and a radically-reworked "Sour Times"). Many have tried to turn singer Beth Gibbons into the poster girl for the suicide hotline, but onstage she plays it positively loose, grooving to partner Geoff Burrows' scratches like a biker-chick at a Zeppelin concert. And during the excellent encore reading of Dummy's "Reasons," Portishead actually, um, rocked. On this night, Portishead did the impossible: it played the Warehouse and sounded good doing it.

- Stuart Berman