TORTOISE tour dates NORTH AMERICA this Summer
(( Photo by Parcifal Werkman ))
Praise for Tortoise and Touch
“While Tortoise's albums have experimented with the editing and overdubbing possibilities of the studio, the band thrives performing in real time.” -New York Times
“a live marvel” -Rolling Stone
“Few have managed the same sense of utopian possibility or satisfying interplay between minimal and maximal.” -Hearing Things
“Body music for head people” -Pitchfork
“Touch is a display of perpetually unpredictable, beautiful, and vital music, for which Tortoise remains the standard bearer.” -Aquarium Drunkard
“Intriguingly unfamiliar…another step onto new turf for the band.” -Chicago Reader
“Thirty years in, Tortoise are still searching, still listening, still following the sound wherever it leads.” -Northern Transmissions
Upcoming Shows
Tortoise are embarking on a run of North American tour dates this summer, beginning at Knockdown Center in NYC on June 25, with stops in DC, Boston, LA, and more. The shows are in support of Touch, their album that was released to critical acclaim last fall via International Anthem / Nonesuch.
Listen and purchase Touch here,
and find all tour dates and tickets below.
June 25 - Queens, NY - Knockdown Center (w/ L’Rain) - tickets
June 26 - King of Prussia, PA - Concerts Under The Stars - tickets
June 27 - Palenville, NY - Follow The Arrow Festival - tickets
June 28 - Washington, D.C. - 9:30 Club - tickets
June 30 - Boston, MA - The Sinclair - tickets
July 1 - Burlington, VT - Higher Ground - tickets
July 2 - Montreal, QC - Montreal Jazz Theatre Mainneuve - tickets
July 3 - Toronto, ON - The Concert Hall - tickets
July 30 - Los Angeles, CA - Skirball Cultural Center - tickets
July 31 - Pioneertown, CA - Pappy & Harriet’s - tickets
August 1 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern - tickets
Tortoise’s 2026 tour lineup – featuring Dan Bitney, James Elkington, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, and John McEntire – perform “I Set My Face to the Hillside” at a Munich show earlier this year, filmed by Enid Valu.
(Touch cover art by øjeRum)
On Touch, the five longstanding Tortoise band members – Bitney, Herndon, McCombs, McEntire, and Jeff Parker – harness their collectivist songwriting approach, a slightly anarchistic but resolutely egalitarian process where ideas triumph over ego, towards an abstracted muscularity. While there are still excursions into the dusky, elegantly gnarled jazz ambience that flourished on landmark works like Millions Now Living Will Never Die and TNT, Touch is perhaps most remarkable for Tortoise's unapologetic embrace of grand gesture. Aerodynamically re-engineered Krautrock, hand-cranked techno rave-ups, and pointillist desert guitar panoramas are all imbued with Tortoise's now-signature internal logic — equally alluring and confounding, a puzzle to be savored rather than solved.
The stylistic diversity is also a reflection of the band's operating circumstances while working on the album. With two members in Los Angeles, another in Portland, and just two remaining in the band's Chicago hometown, their creative process shifted dramatically from when they lived together in a loft space in the late 1990s, honing their sound over endless hours of collective experimentation. Recorded between the three cities — Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago — Touch is the result of an intentional effort by these five musicians to reconnect, recenter, and reinvigorate their sound for what is perhaps the group’s most diverse release to date.
Touch is out now, buy/stream it here.
DELUXE VINYL PACKAGE
Touch comes on a 140 gram vinyl LP, inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket with IARC obi strip and poly-lined printed inner-sleeve. Lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST. North American stock pressed at New Orleans Record Press, all other international stock pressed at Pallas in Germany.
Classic Black Vinyl - $27
Compact Disc - $15
