Any time Tortoise is on tour, the show becomes the destination. With their acclaimed album Touch hitting the scene in late 2025, the instrumental post-rock outfit is back on the road, giving fans a taste of these new tunes as well as plenty of older material. As part of their West Coast jaunt, Tortoise hit Portland, Oregon, for a two-night stand at the intimate Aladdin Theater this week, and on Wednesday, March 4th, they played the second of those shows.
Getting the night started was Spacemoth featuring Maryam Qudus of La Luz. Drawing inspiration from krautrock and psych-pop, their set carried lots of energy with its danceable, droning sound that was also catchy as hell. Reminiscent at times of acts as varied as Yo La Tengo and Animal Collective, but also standing out completely on its own, their synth-drenched performance carried the kind of exhilarating feeling that comes from the instinctive reaction to seeing a really excellent band for the first time, as was surely the case for many in the room. Their sensory overload visuals only enhanced the music.
Tortoise has always been a band where you don’t know what you are going to get, with performances sometimes taking on mellower tones while others ratchet up the intensity. At the Aladdin, the band leaned into the latter side of things as they launched into the spy thriller-meets-western-sci-fi tune “Night Gang” off Touch. Some audience members may have been confused to see guitarist Jeff Parker missing from the stage, but the band had announced just days before the tour started that Parker “is not playing any shows with Tortoise in 2026 for personal and professional reasons.” Luckily, they brought along the talented virtuoso James Elkington – a supremely underrated player – who was more than up for filling such big shoes. As is a staple of Tortoise shows, the band members often switched instruments to conjure a melange of sounds. They also seemed to mix up the setlist quite a bit compared to the night before, reminding the fans that each show on this tour is unique.
“Prepare Your Coffin” saw them tap into a dance-worthy prog-rock style before it morphed into something industrial and dubby. “Dot/Eyes” was a sweeping and dramatic magnum opus with the vibraphone adding all of that moody titillation we expect from Tortoise, complemented by sparse yet rich guitar playing to make for a song that ebbed and flowed gracefully. As the band veered from bouncing exotica with Elkington and Doug McCombs making fine use of their whammy bars layered with dark psyche meditations, to cruising the sonic desert on “Works and Days” and drum and vibraphone interplay on “I Set My Face to the Hillside,” they seemed to be ramping up and building momentum. Following an especially dubbed out “Tin Cans & Twine” that shone with its melodic bass line and between-the-notes guitar ambiance, “Gesceap” was epic in scale. “Promenade à deux” also stood out for its skeezy electronica and double drumming onslaught all happening while exuding surf rock and Afrofunk vibes.
If there is a defining characteristic of a Tortoise show, it may be the constant feeling of anticipation and excitement as you hang on every note. In Portland, this feeling was present every second as the band pulled their fans along on a journey through new and old material. Onstage, they seemed to inject each song with an even stronger jolt of electricity, traded instruments, occasionally danced along, and generally immersed themselves in the music. Their talent for making instrumental music so entrancing and powerful in the live setting was on full display, and even after three decades, they sounded as fresh as ever.
