UK prog rock trio Porcupine Tree have announced their first tour in over 12 years, sharing a fresh new single, Of The New Day.
The 13-date trek – which will take place in support of the band's new record, Closure/Continuation – will commence September 10 at the Meridian Hall in Toronto, making stops in Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington DC and more, before wrapping up in Santiago, Chile on October 7.
Afterwards, the band will head to Europe for a string of dates later that month, beginning in Berlin on October 21 and wrapping up in London on November 11.
Tickets for the North America shows will go on sale this Friday (March 11) at 10AM local time, while fans can purchase tickets for the two South America shows from March 16 at 11AM local time. For more information, head to Porcupine Tree's website. See below for a full list of dates.
- Sep 10: Toronto, ON – Meridian Hall
- Sep 12: Laval, QC – Place Bell
- Sep 14: Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall at Fenway
- Sep 16: New York, NY – Radio City Music Hall
- Sep 17: Philadelphia, PA – The Met Philadelphia
- Sep 18: Washington, DC – The Anthem
- Sep 20: Chicago, IL – Auditorium Theatre
- Sep 23: Irving, TX – The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory
- Sep 25: Denver, CO – Bellco Theatre
- Sep 28: San Francisco, CA – The Masonic
- Sep 30: Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theatre
- Oct 4: Mexico City, MX – Pepsi Center
- Oct 7: Santiago, CL – Movistar Arena
On their latest single, Of The New Day, Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison juxtapose quieter, more stripped-back clean guitar-and-vocal passages with fuller, reverb-soaked dirty electric guitar-driven sections, over a consistently changing time signature – check it out below.
“Of The New Day is a song of rebirth, emerging from darkness,” Wilson explains. “It sounds deceptively simple, a recognizably atypical Porcupine Tree ballad. That is until you realize that the length of the bars is constantly changing, flipping between bars of regular 4/4 time to 3/4, to 5/4 to 6/4, 11/4, so that the track never settles into any steady time.”
He continues: “It's what Porcupine Tree can sometimes do really well, come up with a basic idea that's almost intellectual or mathematical, but carry it off in a way that sounds completely natural and accessible.”
Of The New Day is the second single from Closure/Continuation after Harridan, which arrive back in November. The record itself is set to arrive June 24 via Music For Nations/Megaforce Records.
In a 2021 interview with Guitar World, Wilson described his approach to the guitar as “more like a painter than a player”.
“I like to find those simple chordal shapes and move my fingers in the smallest possible increments to create melodic shifts,” he said. “Sometimes just going from a major to a minor can be a really fascinating way to create.
“Being someone who is not that interested in the theory stuff, I don't even know the names of the chords I'm playing most of the time... Or at least I'm not thinking about the names of the chords! I'm just approaching guitar in a more intuitive way.”
