Review: Riverside, Marble Factory

Isn’t it ironic, as Alanis Morissette might have remarked had she grasped the concept, that old-school progressive rock fans should be so conservative? There are plenty of them out there. They’ll flock to see Steve Hackett or Yes at the Colston Hall, and propel David Gilmour’s Rattle That Lock to the top of the charts (fair enough, it’s a fine album), but newer acts struggle to get a fair hearing. Only Steven Wilson has managed to break through the wall of indifference, and that was after decades of hard slog.

By rights, Warsaw’s Riverside should be right up there with their chum Mr. Wilson. In common with most of the best modern prog acts, they have roots in extreme metal, but their evocative, atmospheric music boasts much that would appeal to fans of ’70s Pink Floyd. Even though their invitation to appear on Jools Holland’s wretched Later appears to have got lost in the post, punters are slowly managing to find them and they pull a sizeable, enthusiastic audience on their second visit to Bristol.

The set is bookened by the opening and closing tracks from Riverside’s outstanding new album Love, Fear and the Time Machine: the Antoine de Saint-Exupery referencing Lost (Why Should I be Frightened by a Hat?) and the lovely, overtly Floydian Found (The Unexpected Flaw of Searching), which, as bassist/vocalist Mariusz Duda remarks dryly, is the first optimistic song they’ve written in their 14 year history. It would have been grand to hear the whole album performed in its entirety, since it works so well as a full-on journey through themes of dislocation and transformation before that final, unexpectedly euphoric emergence into the light. But given that British audiences have had little opportunity to experience Riverside’s six-album catalogue performed live, the career-spanning approach was probably the right one.

Possibly because of their metal background, they’re more animated than most proggers, romping around the Marble Factory’s stage. Duda’s rich, expressive voice proves a magnificent vehicle for the melancholy at the heart of many of his lyrics. He’s also a surprisingly funky bassist, giving Riverside’s music a bounce where others might plod. Delicate, reflective break-up song We Got Used to Us rubs shoulders with epics like The Same River and the multi-faceted Escalator Shrine, which sees keyboard player Michal Lapaj unleash the full Keith Emerson while guitarist Piotr Grudzinski demonstrates that he’s been paying close attention to the school-of-Gilmour ‘less is more’ approach.

This might have been a smaller venue than the ones Riverside are used to playing in mainland Europe, but they treat it as though it were an arena. After all, as Duda observes, there’s something serendipitous about the Love, Fear and the Time Machine tour arriving in Bristol on Back to the Future Day.