Motorpsycho

We've seen plenty of Motorpsycho gigs over the years, and we could reasonably have thought we'd already witnessed the absolute best the band had to offer.

From the hypersonic charges of the early '90s to today, the Norwegian trio has moved through styles and generations, always keeping firm hold of a distinctly psych-rock attitude that has turned now harder, now easier, now more refined, even jazzy.

And yet these big lads from Northern Europe still haven't stopped surprising us: in 2013 they put out yet another top-quality album, and once again they're touring Europe with a set that (as usual) shifts radically from night to night, never skimping on surprises and twists.

But on the Roman date, held on Monday 6 May at a sold-out Circolo degli Artisti, they delivered something more than just a concert: they generated a genuine collective catharsis.

Not so much for how they handled the first part of the set: a flawless mix of electric charges (“The Ocean In Her Eye” from the unrepeatable “Trust Us” was a welcome choice), psychedelic sprawl (“Uberwagner”, turned into a mega jam blended with Wishbone Ash’s “Pilgrim”) and punchier moments (“Walking On The Water” set off the wildest pogo of the night). Not so much for having skillfully alternated a few classics from the past (this time the choice fell on the mostly acoustic “Feel” and “Watersound”, both pulled from the monumental “Timothy’s Monster”) with the successful new frescoes from “Still Life With Eggplant”: the instant classic “Hell, Part 1-3”, a superb blend of hard rock, stoner and psychedelia, their highly personal cover of Love’s “August”, complete with a noise-drenched finale, and the more composite “Barleycorn (Let It Come/ Let It Be)”.

Not so much for having surprised and swept everyone away from the opening notes of the towering crescendo of “Year Zero” to the closing movements of the final “The Bomb-Proof Roll And Beyond”.

But rather for what happened during the encore: after a well-earned cigarette break, the band (bolstered by Sweden’s Reine Fiske of Dungen, who deftly navigated guitars, synths and backing vocals) reopened the party with the knockout one-two of “Sinful, Wind-Borne”/“Drug Thing”, followed by the long wave of “Greener”, and only then did the crowd realize they were witnessing the full sequence of “Blissard”, one of the cornerstone albums in Motorpsycho’s discography, as well as one of the works most loved and cherished by fans.

A priceless tribute to the Roman fans, since on no other date of the tour did the Norwegians play such a sequence – if anything, the encores were usually limited to at most three or four songs, albeit often long ones. Instead, the Rome set carried on with “’s Numbness”, “The Nerve Tattoo”, “True Middle”, the acclaimed masterpiece “Sonic Teenage Guinevere”, and then, staying true to the original tracklist, even the ballads “Manmower” and “Fool’s Gold”, duly stretched out with digressions of the most psychotropic kind. It’s easy to imagine the delirium that struck the disbelieving crowd, suddenly catapulted back almost twenty years into an unimaginable trip.

An evening, then, that exceeded any reasonable expectation, an exemplary blend of power and delicacy, class and force, finely grained arrangements and jagged distortion, all balanced on that alchemical tightrope that a live act can rarely achieve. Absolute champions, a flawless performance, every track executed with masterful skill across two brutal hours and forty minutes – and this time, topping it will be hard. Monumental and definitive.

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