Van der Graaf Generator

Nokia Theatre Times Square; Sun 21

Photograph: Brendan Buesnel

“Hope I die before I get old,” the Who proclaimed on the cusp of a career that outlasted its currency long ago. Rock & roll was never meant to concern the aged, yet veteran performers still attempt to truss themselves within a whalebone corset of eternal licentiousness. “Never say die,” Ozzy Osbourne put it, back when he could form words. But Peter Hammill, frontman of long-running English prog-rock institution Van der Graaf Generator, is having none of it: Trisector, issued last year, is concerned with the passage of time, but viewed with keen insight rather than denial or self-pity.

“I can’t find my glasses, don’t know where I left them / So I can’t expect to get much on the visionary score,” Hammill sings in “All That Before.” It’s a far cry from the killers, lemmings and emperors of which he once cooed and roared, backed by David Jackson’s wailing saxophones, Hugh Banton’s growling organ and drummer Guy Evans’s loose-limbed drive. The group’s voluminous darkness probably explains why it influenced prog-rock debunkers like John Lydon and Mark E. Smith during its fractious initial run, which ended in 1978.

Trisector, Van der Graaf Generator’s second studio album since reuniting in 2005, finds them reduced to a trio sans Jackson; lean, patient songs suit a mature band, with Hammill retaining a knack for turning vivid phrases. Last year at the Cutting Room, he tapped into his vintage fury armed with nothing but a guitar, a piano and a huge goblet of red; at Nokia, his old mates will spur him to dig deeper still.—Steve Smith

Buy Trisector on BN.com | Buy it on Amazon.com

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