Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise played two NYC shows (pics from Le Poisson Rouge, live recording from Littlefield)

photos by P Squared

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge
Tortoise at Le Poisson RougeTortoise at Le Poisson Rouge, 3/16/2016

“The Catastrophist” is built on music commissioned by the city of Chicago. How did that come about?
The commission was an idea thrown at us by this guy we knew who did a lot of arts programming for the city of Chicago. The idea was that we would perform a new set of unrecorded material and have guest musicians that were from the jazz community in Chicago.

How did that morph into the album?
Basically, we had to re-evaluate and sort of figure out what would make them work as Tortoise songs. With the absence of these guest musicians, what we had were these frameworks of ideas that weren’t that dynamic. … To make them interesting without the extra musicians we had to work on them more. In some instances, we had to come up with extra parts or bridges or extra harmonic elements so there was more going on. – [AM NY]

Influential Chicago post-rock band Tortoise released a new album back in January and brought their current tour to NYC for two shows. They hit Le Poisson Rouge on March 16 and Littlefield on March 17, and we’ve got pictures from the LPR show in this post. Support was provided by Mind Over Mirrors (aka fellow Chicagoan Jaime Fennelly) and 75 Dollar Bill. Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley joined the band at their Littlefield show to sing on The Catastrophist track “Yonder Blue” (as she does on the album), and you can listen to a recording of that whole show, via NYC Taper, below.

Did you go to either of Tortoise’s show? How were they? Check out more pictures of the show below.

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill

Mind Over Mirrors

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Mind Over Mirrors at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise at Le Poisson Rouge

Tortoise @ Littlefield 3/17/2016

SETLIST: Tortoise @ Littlefield 3/17/2016
01. [Intro]
02. The Catastrophist
03. Prepare Your Coffin
04. Tesseract
05. Monica
06. In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven There Were Women and Men
07. Hot Coffee
08. Gesceap
09. Blackjack
10. At Odds With Logic
11. Gigantes
12. Eros
13. Salt the Skies
14. [encore break]
15. Yonder Blue (with Georgia Hubley)
16. Seneca
17. [encore break]
18. Shake Hands With Danger
19. High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In