Porter Robinson Smile! :D World Tour Review: A Night of Nostalgia and New Sounds
About a month ago, I went to the Porter Robinson Smile! :D World Tour in Las Vegas, NV, and it was a great time. At this point, I’ve seen Porter a bunch of times, and this show was easily in the top three.
EricDOA opened the show, and he did a great job of hyping up the crowd and keeping everyone engaged. This guy is straight-up Zoomer brain-rot with all the Call of Duty and Family Guy references, but it was fun. I only knew the song Porter remixed (“Search & Destroy”) on stream and a cover he did, but it was a good time regardless.
The show was set up into three sections. The Smile! :D part, the Nurture part, and the Worlds part. It was fantastic, and the show was 100% worth the ticket price, as it was probably around two and a half hours long for Porter’s set alone.
It was exciting to watch the live Smile! :D show after attending the listening party for the album. The band he gathered up for this tour was a lot tighter and more prepared than the one he used for the Second Sky 2022 show, and it is fun to see Porter improve at playing guitar since he was playing like someone who only learned three chords at Second Sky. The cover of MGMT’s “Kids” was amazing, and I was so glad that it was a full and pretty faithful cover.
Nurture is my favorite Porter project, and it was cool to watch it live again. I am happy that Porter truly put in the effort to adapt his discography to live instrumentation and recreate visuals and clothing from the era.
The Worlds section of the show was also fantastic, and Margot (his bass player and vocalist) has a great voice that felt like a major highlight. The Worlds songs sound great with a band they sort of remind me of more spacey music like MGMT, Beach House, or M83. The live versions of “Fresh Static Snow” and “Goodbye to a World” were probably my favorite parts of the section.
“Cheerleader” is such a massive and hype song, especially live, and it was the absolute best way to end the show. The crowd went nuts and jumped and screamed the lyrics, and overall, it was a pretty good crowd. The tour was great, and I have seen Porter Robinson around eight times at this point, and it is probably my second favorite set. The North American leg of the tour is done now, but in the future, if you ever get the chance to see Porter Robinson, do it.
