Puscifer at the Paramount Theatre
As brooding lead singers go, Maynard James Keenan definitely comes across as a guy not to fuck with when he’s onstage. He’s pretty intense even when he’s trying to be comedic—as he seems to want to be with Puscifer, that other band he’s in, better known to most as “not Tool” and “not A Perfect Circle.” And though Puscifer has been a long-running, rather nebulous side/solo project for Keenan, it hasn’t been until recent years that he’s trotted it out for official releases and multi-city tours. The most recent incarnation of the band made its second appearance in two years at the Paramount Theatre last Thursday night—a deliberate choice of venue for Keenan, who comes across also as a guy that works better in controlled environments.
With assigned seating throughout the theater, and with strict rules about flash photography and recording (that would be a very stern “no”), the show was set up much more as a theatrical experience rather than as a free-for-all live concert. One employee even warned that security would be “like white on rice” should anyone even attempt to take photos during the show. And they were. The ushers patrolled the aisles throughout the evening, flash-lighting offending concert-goers and even forcing one guy to delete the few snapshots he had gotten on his cellphone before letting him return to his seat. The irony, of course, is that the extreme enforcement turned out to be way more distracting than just letting people take pictures, but that kind of oxymoronic push-and-pull seems to be exactly what Puscifer is all about.
The show itself was a choreographed spectacle, a concert with video skits between songs (starring Keenan and Mr. Show’s Laura Milligan as singing hillbilly couple Billy D and Hildy Berger) and an occasional monologue/philosophical rant from Keenan. He opened the set by pulling a full-size mini-trailer out onto the stage, which he then proceeded to set up a faux campsite around, replete with fold-out chairs and a barbecue grill lit with a fake fire, all the while waxing about mortality and creativity and how “life is too short not to create something with every breath we draw.” Heady stuff, indeed.
Plunging then into a rousing version of “Green Valley”—off the new Conditions Of My Parole—the show unfolded in an expectedly theater-timed fashion, moving from song to skit to song to skit. Almost aimlessly, as if in Catholic mass, the audience followed along—standing and then sitting, sitting and then standing. And while Puscifer opened strongly, and ended even stronger, there was a noticeable lull in the middle. Worse even, the show—which admittedly was a much more cohesive effort than the last time the band was in town—had no breakout moments, rather just a long restlessness set to mostly cheap-looking, looping video projections.
As a sort-of comedy troupe, sort-of-serious live band, Puscifer seems yet to have found a middle ground that works well with the two things. It may not come on this tour, or even the next, but it does seem to be moving toward that, if a bit too slowly.
