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Tool at the Glasgow SECC Review

On Saturday, I saw Tool at the SECC in Glasgow.  I deliberately took a couple of days to write it up, as I would have been altogether too gushing, too excessive in my praise.  On re-reading the following paragraphs, I should, perhaps, have waited another week.

The music was, just by itself, wonderful.  Opening with Stinkfist and closing with Ǽnema, there were almost two hours of intense, experimental, progressive rock, with clear influences from bands like King Crimson (who opened for Tool in a series of 2001 concerts) or Yes, but heavier than either.  The influence of King Crimson was particularly obvious in the broader experience: the designs on the backdrop; the images on the four screens before which the band played; the spectacular use of that somewhat retro medium, a few dozen lasers; the lighting rig.  Each was designed by what Tool call "collaborators", highlighting the importance to the band of the elements that suround their music.P>

Despite Maynard Keenan's decision to work with A Perfect Circle when he wanted to explore more spiritual themes, Tool have always explored such elements in their music, albeit in more obtuse ways.  With the latest album, the theme is primitive and shamanistic with eastern overtones in the imagery and (as ever) in the vocal lines that Keenan <i>drifts</i> over the intense, driving dream-rock riffs of the band.  I sat there and wondered if this was the sort of removal from self, of awe and entrancement, that is experienced by the houngan in voodoo, or that one would have experienced in a holy mass before the Emperor in the Hagia Sophia.  I certainly felt an intensity of sensation that only one other public event has ever matched (my marriage).

The Beatles could never have imagined, in their most psychedelic phase, coming up with the imagery of a Tool track and its video.  For examples, take a look at the ones for Schism or Stinkfist.  Alarming, disturbing, uncomfortable, undeniably beautiful, they are strikingly different from the imagery of almost anyone else producing music and videos today.  One of my friends once sat down and watched five or six Tool videos in a row, late at night on MTV, and was worried when, by the end, she felt she was beginning to understand.  Fortunately, the moment of enlightenment passed, and by the morning she was just as "eh?!?" as any normal person.

Anyway, the support were the excellent, ultra-heavy Mastodon.  The name gives you a clue as to just how very metal they are.  As, I suppose, is their penchant for naming albums and songs after things nautical: "Sea Beast", "Battke at Sea", "Leviathan" (and about 20 others).  They played a cracking, varied set, louder and heavier than Tool (with occasional trippy, Deftones-ish passages), and I would have been happy to have gone to a gig where they headlined.  They played a bunch of tracks from their new, ultra-left-field concept album Blood Mountain, includinng "Colony of Birchmen" and "Crystal Skull", and left the place cheering them. 

Tool concentrated on playing tracks from 10,000 Days.  I really mean that they concentrated on it: there were really only two moments of direct interaction with the crowd: an eery version of the lighter phenomenon, and a short speech at the start from Keenan, asking everyone not to smoke.  Clearly unaware that nobody has smoked in indoor public spaces in Scotland for almost a year now, he must have been delighted by the 100% compliance with his wishes.

The experimental nature of Tool's music becomes even more obvious during the lengthy improvisation that they indulge in during concerts.  Listening to the rhythm changes in something like Schism (alternating between 5/8 and 7/8 time on a bar-by-bar basis) being sustained over almost ten minutes is a strange and provocative thing.  The odd thing is that i was so entranced by lasers, lights and imagery that I sometimes forgot to watch the band: in many ways I think that Tool were far more successful in distracting attention from band members as commodities than the Gorrillaz.  I have seen both live, and it is only the extraordinary stage presence and vocal quality of Keenan that belies this trait: Albarn is fun and charismatic (even when just a back-projected silhouette), but Keenan - not a big man - dominates an entire space, and has a voice that is beyond striking (just check out the wonderful collaboration with the Deftones on White Pony; "Passenger").

I have to stop myself.  This paean of praise, this indulgence in hagiography, is excessive.  But I did feel, walking out, confident that I had seen the best concert I have ever seen, or that I ever will.

Oh, and the security at the SECC was as horrendous and unpleasant as awful, trawling the crowd for 15-year-olds taking snaps with their camera-phones and throwing them out.  This is why I only go there when absolutely necessary.