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Richard Watt

Tag Archives: StevenWilson

56. Hand. Cannot. Erase., Steven Wilson, 2015

Posted on September 18, 2022 by Richard

Back at the beginning of this exercise, I promised one album per artist, but I always knew that there would be both a Porcupine Tree and a Steven Wilson album in this, and while I could have picked one of the later solo albums which are much less Porcupine-like, I wanted to explore this album because I think it says something about how listening to albums has both changed out of all recognition since those early days in Aberdeen, and is yet surprisingly similar now.

I’m coming to the end of this journey, and I’m feeling that some of the conclusions I thought I was coming to may not be as clear-cut as I imagined.  For example, here is an album which I have regularly listened to in exactly the same way I used to listen to those ELP and Wings albums back in the early seventies.

Which is to say, alone, in my room, watching the album rotate on the turntable while I pore over the cover and do nothing else that just listen.  I think that from the point when I was first able to listen to my music in a car (in the van, in my case), I slowly lost the ability to just stop and listen; there always seemed to be something else to be getting on with, but there’s a song on this album which I credit with bringing me back to the original way of doing things; a song which only emerged into the light when I stopped doing anything else and just listened.

There’s also a song on here which only truly reveals itself when you see the video accompanying it, so that’s another area to explore.

Following the demise of Porcupine Tree, which happened more or less at the point when I started to become a proper fan, I naturally developed an interest in the works of Steven Wilson; a lifetime of music-making which I think would take a lifetime to explore and appreciate, given all the projects and remixes he’s been involved in.  Around that time, I first got myself a smartphone, and discovered that there was a Steven Wilson app.

At which point, I think it’s worth pausing to consider just how all this music was now reaching me.

It’s not a direct analogy, but bear with me – in 1975, Genesis, a band I was just discovering, broke up.  For some definition of ‘broke up’, of course – this is what I mean by it not being a direct analogy.

The lead singer, Peter Gabriel, started releasing solo albums, but the only way to hear one of them was to go out and buy it (it didn’t appear in the library, and the only other option I had was to borrow it from one of my more Genesis-obsessed friends, which – I think – is what I eventually did.)

By 2010, armed with my early smartphone, I could hear all or any of the tracks on Steven Wilson’s first couple of solo albums any time I liked, as I had access to iTunes, and shortly thereafter, to streaming services like Spotify.  The teenaged me would have passed out, I think, at the idea of just being able to pull this music from the ether using a device which fit in my pocket.

I mean, the teenaged me was also heavily into science fiction, so might have coped better than most, I don’t know….

There was, however, a downside to being able to hear all this music whenever I wanted.  Firstly, it took me a long time to get round to the Steven Wilson solo albums, because I was busy streaming endless albums I had discarded over the years, copies of things I still had, but which were in poor condition (something weird happened to my CD of Hejira, for example, so it skipped like an old-fashioned, poorly treated LP), or went looking for back catalogues I knew I should have heard, but had never quite got round to.

Eventually, however, I started to work my way through the solo Wilson albums, and liked what I heard.  It wasn’t until much later, however, that it occurred to me that ‘heard’ was the operative word – I wasn’t so much listening to these albums as hearing them, and perhaps I just accepted that this was the way things worked now – who had time to properly listen to things any more?

Well, that was, of course, nonsense.

Back in the early 2000s, I would often listen carefully to music through headphones, not only as I travelled, but as I walked around the village in a vain attempt to hold back the effect of time and a sedentary lifestyle on my waistline.  All that had happened in the meantime was that my life became busier, with much less time available for listening – I think you can see that in the spread of albums in the list as a whole.

Suddenly, with children old enough to fend for themselves (and being invested in their own musical tastes), I found myself wondering if I had missed a thing or two, and resolved to do better, starting – I think – with this album, which was the first Steven Wilson solo album I actually bought, as opposed to just streaming it.

Back in 2011, I heard a review of a documentary film called Dreams of a Life, a film I – strangely – have never seen.  The review made a strong impression on me, however, because of the subject matter – the idea that a person seemingly involved in a normal, socially involved, life could die and lie undiscovered for three years was – and is – profoundly shocking.  The idea that Joyce Vincent could be overlooked and not particularly missed is extraordinary, but possibly not as uncommon as you might think.

Hearing, therefore, that this album was partly inspired by those events, and by an artist I had come to admire, meant that I was going to actually own a copy of it, rather than just tune in to it whenever I felt like it.  For what felt like the first time in years, I listened to a new album almost the way I used to absorb the ones I borrowed from the library all those years ago.

But the modern world has its distractions, and it wasn’t until I actually went into a record shop and bought a vinyl copy that I really listened to it, and it was only then that I discovered just how much was going on; only then that I listened to it the way I used to listen to music back when there were no smartphones, no internet, not much television, and nothing on the radio which reflected my musical tastes.

Hand. Cannot. Erase. is a concept album, then, but it’s one of loosely connected themes, not a linear story.  It does eventually touch on Joyce Vincent’s story, but only after a journey around several other female voices, articulating feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Opening track First Regret is a gentle instrumental, setting out part of the musical palette – ringing, open acoustic guitar chords compete with a fluid and flexible bass to keep at bay the power chords which threaten to break in from time to time.  The track blends seamlessly into 3 Years Older via the first of a series of jaw-dropping Guthrie Govan guitar solos.  The first lyric of the album demonstrates Wilson’s increasingly confident voice – it’s up close and personal here in its fragility; the Steven Wilson of In Absentia treated his voice as one element in the mix; here, it’s leading the song and while the instrumental break gets quite excitable in places, there’s a calmness which comes from the vocal and which asserts itself in a tale of single motherhood and ostracism before breaking out into a full-on 1970s Prog Rock wig-out, but shot through with modern percussion sounds which keep it from sounding like a pastiche or parody before coming to an emormously satisfying ending with one extra beat in the final line to round everything off.

The title track is all sparse guitars and treated drums at first, and there’s a lyric which refers to emails where its predecessors would have talked of letters.  As it expands into the fullness of its central arrangement, I’m struck by how – after more than half a century of this kind of popular music – it’s still possible for the truly great songwriters to come up with instantly memorable, catchy melodies.  I know something of the mathematics behind the fact that we’ll likely never run out of new melodic structures, but this album is full of tunes you feel sure someone must surely have thought of before.  Parts of this rock like a Porcupine Tree song might, but much of it sounds new and different, and will have you singing along like the best pop songs do.

Flipping over my vinyl copy, we come to the most interesting of the songs in the collection.  Perfect Life is a meditation from the perspective of a 13-year old girl, narrated by Katherine Begley over the kind of beat which Nitin Sawnhey was turning my head with a few weeks back.  It’s completely unlike anything else on here, except it isn’t really – it’s all of a piece; this is just another aspect of where Wilson’s music was at this point.  When it breaks into song at the end, it is – of course – another sumptuous melody which perfectly balances the loss and longing of the spoken first half.

Incidentally, this is one of those rare songs which has had a few key lines stripped from it after the lyric sheet went to print – the elision makes the song much more enigmatic and strange than the printed version, but both versions live in my head.

It’s impossible, I think, to explain what exactly Routine does to my emotions.  Its jagged and tense opening hints at things unspoken and puts you on edge, a tension which feels like it will never resolve as the song grows subtly and pushes in on you from all directions.

I’m going to recommend listening to this while watching the astonishing hand-animated video, as it not only explains more of the background to the grief-laden story, but provides a visualisation of the shattering catharsis performed by Ninet Tayeb as she finally allows her character to give voice – an inchoate scream, to be sure, but voice none the less – to pretty much every human emotion.  It’s one of the very few moments in music which can cause me to spontaneously burst into tears; it’s that powerful.

But it doesn’t end there – after the storm has passed, there’s a daybreak of hope and regret, perfectly expressed in a repeated unresolvable couplet in which we, the grieving, have our conflict eloquently expressed.

For a long time, I thought Routine  was the best track on this album.  It isn’t, but it’s close.

Another side, another shift in mood.  From melancholy and grief, we are treated to the appropriately scary sounds of Home Invasion.  Not a song to be listened to alone in the dark, it isn’t satisfied with throwing as many distorted instruments as it can find at you in an insistent, so fast it’s slightly out of control, rhythm; it also eventually breaks out a menacing distorted vocal which points the way forward to Wilson’s later album The Future Bites.  This vocal section is much more melodic, and even manages to be soothing in parts before dumping you back into the madness of the modern world with no apology.

Before it goes, Home Invasion elides into Regret #9 which teases you with what sound like voices from a Cold War numbers station and a keyboard solo played in the manner of a guitar solo, which eventually merges into a guitar solo played much more like a keyboard solo.  It’s properly discombobulating, this song, especially as it fades out to the sound of a few sparse notes picked out on a banjo.

Transience is much closer in tone and theme to Porcupine Tree.  It features a train – a favourite Wilson motif – and deliciously layered voices; all as far as I can tell Wilson himself.  Unlike the other tracks on here, this one is short and simple.  Like most of them, however, it’s melodic and compelling.

The final side begins with what I eventually understood to be the best track on here, and possibly Wilson’s solo masterpiece, Ancestral.  A great, intricate edifice of a song, it begins in the sparse reverberating architecture of a song finding its way, accompanied by a delicate but confident flute line. It gradually adds layers of drumbeat and meaning to the lyric, which is about the lonely in the big city, and how the network of ancestry can so easily be left behind without necessarily meaning to.  As it reaches this conclusion, the full breadth of the arrangement is heard, then we are swept up into another Guthrie Govan guitar solo.

I’ve tried not to be carried away in my descriptions of individual instrumental parts in any of these albums, but, honestly, if you have any sense of the power of a great guitar solo, you really need to hear this one – it’s expressive, dynamic and somehow develops the themes of the lyric in one take.  It was only when I sat down and seriously listened to the guitar solo on Ancestral that I began to understand what a great song it is.

Then, just as you think you’ve heard it all, there’s a section of what I can only describe as broken time, as the song threatens to run away with itself, then all sorts of rhythms and time signatures compete for our attention, gradually evening out into a full-throated rock riff, albeit in a time signature I still can’t quite pin down, another break down into a two-chord pattern, before just letting loose with all guns blazing and then dissolving into a spaced-out burst of psychedelia with flutes and hi-hats.

All of which is just setting up the return of the main (is it though?) riff, this time pulling in all the prior themes, carrying the flute line with it to what sounds like one of those conclusions compsers of great symphonies used to indulge in when they wanted to be sure that every theme and passing motif was properly tied up and concluded.

It must have taken a great deal of self-control not to end the album there, as it’s one of the most conclusive pieces of music I’ve ever heard.

But, of course, we have to return to the main theme of the album.  If Joyce Vincent is anywhere in all of this, it’s in the words of Happy Returns, which – without making anything specific – reflect on that bafflingly sad story while effortlessly rolling out yet another memorable melody and lyric.

We hear Joyce’s imagined voice for a couple of verses, sparsely accompanied as if to highlight her solitude, before the essential humanity of this album kicks in and without changing the story in any way, makes it seem more hopeful.  I don’t think it’s trying to let the world off the hook for its neglect and indifference, but is perhaps suggesting that we’re not all like that.

And then, as if we were watching her spirit leaving her body, a choir sings Joyce Carol Vincent to her rest in Ascendent Here On… and a pretty much perfect album comes to a pretty much perfect end.

It’s easy to dismiss a lot of the music I listen to as ephemeral or uninvolving (beyond the visceral thrill of a well-executed riff or a moment of perfection in a solo), but that isn’t a label you can pin on this album.  It’s involving, emotional, thrilling, sad, comforting and joyful, often all at the same time.  Some time in the late 1990s I wondered if this kind of music had run its course.

No, it hadn’t.  Not even close.

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

Oh, yes.  There are a great many Steven Wilson and Wilson-adjacent things to try, but sticking strictly to his solo work, the run of albums from The Raven That Refused To Sing to To The Bone showcase an artist developing his voice and crafting everything from thoughtful ballads to perfect pop songs along the way.  The most recent solo album, The Future Bites isn’t at all like anything we’ve just been listening to, and because of that seems to have a poor reputation.  Don’t listen to the naysayers – it’s a terrific thing.

Compilations to consider?

If you’re completely new to Wilson, once you’ve listened to this album, try Transience.  It gives a fair idea of what he’s about.

Live albums?

In keeping with the whole ‘biggest artist you’ve never heard of’ vibe around SW, the Home Invasion concert, which is available as a DVD as well as an album is a breathtaking overview of his three Royal Albert Hall performances in 2018, and is as good a live album as this century has produced.

Anything else?

So much.  Porcupine Tree, obviously, but also No-Man and Blackfield.  Oh, and Storm Corrosion, which many people will tell you (not me, but it’s close) is his best work.  The man’s an insane workaholic, and pretty much everything he touches has a guarantee of quality.  If you get through all the stuff he’s performed on, try seeking out some of his remixes, especially the Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant and King Crimson ones.  Or the Tears For Fears or Simple Minds ones – there’s something for everyone. Oh, and he’s written a book, because of course he has.  Haven’t read it yet, but I have a birthday coming up…

Posted in 60at60, Music, Writing | Tags: 60at60, HandCannotErase, OrIsIT, prog, StevenWilson |

54. In Absentia, Porcupine Tree, 2002

Posted on September 4, 2022 by Richard

Looking at the list of albums still to come, I notice there’s about to be a ten year gap in release dates, which does in a way reflect what was going on in my life, although – thanks to my insistence on sticking to release dates – the gap in me listening to new music actually covers a different ten year span, so that this one and, to a degree, the next one, are out of place in my personal chronology.

Still, there was a ten year gap in my listening habits, and I should probably explore that a bit.

Otherwise, I’ll just suddenly say something like “so, after several years living in Canada…”

The gap comes, pretty much, in the first decade of the 21st century.  Not, as I later discovered, that it was a quiet decade for new music, but it was a chaotic and turbulent time in my life – in all our lives – and if I bought new music, it was by artists I already knew and loved (and are therefore already on this list), or classical recordings.

Or downloads, which became a thing in those ten years.  I’ll be coming to streaming and downloads, I think.

So, in the last six years of my time at Ferrero, I not only became a properly qualified IT person, but became responsible for a number of significant projects, the details of which need not detain us.  Over those six years, my working life evolved from the occasional trip around the UK, to the occasional trip around Europe (mainly to Luxembourg or Italy), to – in the last 18 months – regular and somewhat draining trips to Italy (or Germany, or Poland, but mainly Italy) as I worked on the UK part of a genuinely global and transformative IT project.

It’s a curious part of my life, that 18 months.  From a work perspective, I wouldn’t change a minute of it; I learned so much which has served me well in later years, and was exposed to a vast amount of experiences (and food) which I’ll never forget, but it was tough on a fledgling parent, to be away as much as I was.  Even on the weeks when all I did was drive in to work in the morning and home again at night, I was often out of the house for 12 hours at a time.  The boys were young, and I felt I only saw them at weekends.

Eventually, with the UK part of the project complete, and focus turning to the Canadian rollout (and the Russian one, and the Mexican one), the prospect of my travel becoming more global or my responsibilities in the UK becoming more onerous, we upped sticks and moved to Canada.

That is, of course, a long and complicated story, and one I’ve told on here before.  We moved to northern BC in April 2006, roughly in the middle of my decade of not hearing new music, and my life changed utterly – from full-time and then some IT and Project Manager, to primary parent and part-time (when I could fit it in) IT technician.

Our parenting roles reversed, and I became the one doing the school run, making the meals, filling the endless days of Spring Break or summer holiday, and – I may have mentioned this a bit – coaching soccer.  It’s tempting to be a little blasé about the whole thing now, but it was a big upheaval, and looking back, I was taking refuge in familiar music, and not seeking out the new.

So, I missed this (and a great many other things) when it first came out, and I might never have encountered Porcupine Tree, or Steven Wilson, or all the associated side-projects, were it not for my love of Prog, and Glasgow Airport.

Over the first years in Canada, we went back to the UK (to Scotland, mainly) several times.  Sometimes we all went, flying from Vancouver to Glasgow and back, and sometimes Zoe or I would go alone, for various reasons.  On one of our trips back (I covered some of the detail of this in the last set of memories, ten years ago; I’m not going to elaborate here for now), I was perusing WH Smith in Glasgow Airport and spotted an early copy of what would eventually become Prog magazine.

I think it’s fair to say that the magazine market was in an uncertain phase, one it may well still be in, and it seemed that one of the ways the industry was addressing this was by spinning niche interest publications off more established titles – I think this was a spinoff of the more widely-read Classic Rock magazine – but it intrigued me.

It intrigued me because in all of the revisiting and ‘comfort listening’ I had been doing, I has been gradually reintroducing myself to some of my mid-seventies favourites.  I went through a significant ‘rediscovering Rush’ period around this time, and plundered iTunes for digital copies of, firstly, all the albums I’d owned and loved back then, and then all the other ones I’d not paid enough attention to, hearing many of them in clear digital sound, often as if for the first time.

I also had come to realise that my thinking about music had changed – I think that while the British music scene (if such a thing even exists) is keen to label and classify things, while there didn’t seem to be any of that going on in Canada.  Aside from the clear (and mandatory) bias towards Canadian music, all kinds of music sat cheek by jowl with things which to my ear sounded incongruous.  The landscape was different, and the conversations I’d have with people were also different.  Being a fan of Rush was a given – I think you get a Rush fan club membership with your Canadian passport – but owning up to those early ELP albums would prompt earnest discussion rather than sniggering.

The reason I bought that copy of Prog magazine was that it promised a countdown of the top 50 (or top 100; I really should have figured this out by now) Prog albums ‘of all time’.  As I’ve said before, nine of the top ten were familiar to me, although I disagreed with the order, naturally.

I read the thing cover to cover on the flight back; I made notes in the margin of things I’d like to explore a little more, and – mainly, I think, because I didn’t know anything about it – I went and downloaded myself a copy of In Absentia, which was the one exception in that top ten.

I think it and the next album in this list were what brought me firmly back to ‘new music’ as a concept; everything which follows from here is music I heard for the first time more or less as it came out – in my fifties, I rediscovered the joy of new sounds which had faded out of my life when all the other supposedly more important things crowded in.

It’s not a coincidence that this later flourishing of new things coincides with the rise of streaming services and downloads, and more recently, and to my endless joy, with the revival of the record store (record shop, the teenaged me would have insisted).  I can overlook the way the current generation seem to mangle the terminology (what on earth is a ‘vinyl’?) because the sheer joy of being able to go into a shop and flick through the new releases, and be transported back to The Other Record Shop as I decide whether or not I can afford this new album I’ve only vaguely heard about, but which looks like it would be right up my street.

I first heard In Absentia after flying back form Glasgow that day in 2009, but I first properly heard it when I bought my own vinyl copy.  Even though it wasn’t recorded with the intention of being played on vinyl, that’s how it sounds best.  To me, at least.

But is it Prog?  Let’s find out.

I had no idea what to expect on first listen, so the spacey guitar line with sound effects shifting between speakers in no way prepared me for the kind of aural assault I hadn‘t heard since the days of listening to Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath albums.  Blackest Eyes, of course, quickly settles into a more gentle, almost acoustic melody with a ridiculously catchy chorus about…

Well, it seems to be about a stalker or serial killer, or something.  The lyric certainly reflects the duality of the musical approach; at once melodic and soothing before exploding with the sort of riff in weird time signatures which suddenly made me realise what I’d been missing all these years.  Honestly, one track in, I was on board.

Which is, of course, appropriate, as the second track is Trains, which pulls off the same trick of being calm and melodic before opening out into a much wider and expansive soundscape, with some of the same riffs going, but there’s so much more to hear in this – there’s a plangent guitar solo, which seems to somehow migrate from electric to acoustic as it goes, and then some dense but gorgeous vocal harmonies and a second instrumental section with syncopated handclaps and what definitely sounds like a banjo before the chorus comes back in, heralding the return of the full band and the maddeningly catchy riff.  Again, it’s not entirely clear what it’s about – it’s vaguely disturbing, but not something you can out your finger on, then the handclaps are buried under a fair approximation of a peal of church bells, and…

And we’re off into Lips of Ashes, which had a spaced-out guitar sound and a doubled vocal surrounded by reverberating effects which make the whole thing eerie and hard to pin down.  It’s not the pop-inflected sound of the opening two tracks; it’s more of a soundscape with disturbing imagery than a verse-chorus-verse kind of song, but it also boasts a terrific guitar solo, and – look, let’s just get this out of the way, shall we – it’s most definitely Prog, although not in the way I remember it, which was much more about showing off and cramming as many instruments as possible in there.

Side two (sides are shorter these days, as everything is spread over two discs but only lasts about an hour) starts with The Sound of Muzak, which has a remarkable lopsided rhythm going on under a lush melody and a vocal about the cheapening and corporatizing of music.  Right about here is when I thought “yup, they’re playing my tune”.

The song is deceptively straightforward in its blunt message, but in absolutely nothing else – Gavin Harrison’s drum track is impossible to air-drum along with, in the way that the best of Neil Peart’s were, and every time you think you’ve got a handle on this song, it shifts gear subtly, and dares you to follow along.  If you want to know what’s wrong with the pre-packaged and soulless music of today at the same time as hearing what could be done about it, this is the song for you.

Gravity Eyelids is produced to sound lie it’s playing in a nearby room with the door shut, although the vocal is right there with you, almost sitting on your shoulder.  Steven Wilson (of whom more later) has developed as a vocalist over the twenty years or so since this was recorded, but there’s something to be said for the way his voice here is pushing against the limits, almost falsetto in places – it lends a tension to the song which is entirely in keeping with its – again – unsettling lyrics.  The scratchy aesthetic of the sound lasts until the instrumental break, when the guitars emerge into the same space as the voice and tear through the kind of break where the riff (and the laser gun sound effects) are more important than the actual solo, which seems to be happening quietly in the background.

Once out the other side, all the instruments start pulling together, and it’s now the voice which appears to be treated and less distinct.  It’s a superb transition, and lends the song that most Prog of traits, an actual progression.  It, of course, all fades back into the underground from whence it came, giving the impression that the band had been plugging away in that locked room this whole time.

Wedding Nails is the kind of instrumental wig-out which is hard to pull off unless you’re as talented as these four.  Again, I find myself thinking of the later-period Rush instrumentals, which mined much the same seam, just for the joy of playing together and making as much noise as possible in shifting time signatures.

Since I don’t have lyrics to worry about, I’ll just take the opportunity of observing that I’m reviewing this only a couple of weeks after OK computer, and the inner sleeve design, with the reversed typewritten words, complete with crossing out are, well – unlike everything else on this album – a little derivative.

Or maybe it’s an homage.

Flipping over again, it’s another of those catchy melodies.  This time, Prodigal hooks you with a narrative verse pulled along with two separate guitar lines – one which works as a kind of drone, and the other breaking in from time to time with a gentle riff illustrating as much as it is accompanying.  There’s a chorus of sorts with more of those lush harmonies, an instrumental sort-of-middle-eight which threatens to break into a bridge section then unfurls a distorted solo before dropping us back into a verse section which has a single line designed to make you re-eveluate everything you’ve heard so far, and cast the narrator in a totally different light, befgore bursting out into the actual solo which had only been threatened before.

Sometimes in Porcupine Tree music, you get the feeling there are two songs going on at once.  The end of Prodigal is one of those times for me.

Immediately we’re into .3 which is all about Colin Edwin’s sinuous and muscular bass line.  It introduces us to the broken rhythm of the song and then refuses to settle back down into being part of the accompaniment; it stays there throughout, insistent and purposeful.  It’s almost an instrumental, this, with sweeping strings (arranged by Dave Gregory, who we’ll be meeting again soon) and assorted noises off before it drops into a very distinctive Porcupine Tree acoustic guitar riff under the kind of lyric last heard in the early eighties nuclear paranoia.  Never fear, though, here comes that bass again to return us to the feeling of being…

Well, of being unsettled and off-balance, to be honest.  .3 is not a cheery singalong kind of track, to be honest, but that’s nothing compared to the industrial barrage of The Creator Has a Mastertape which bleeps and yowls over a treated, half-spoken kind of lyric which makes you think of strange, half-remembered experimental European movies you used to watch at one in the morning when you were a student.

Well, it does that to me, anyway.  It’s absolutely riveting, but not for the faint of heart.  It’s Prog, but it’s not exactly the way I remember it being.  I can also report that it is the kind of song which makes you take corners too fast, and is not recommended for when you’re driving down narrow country lanes.

Heartattack in a Layby is a song about – well, have a guess.  Appropriately reflective and mournful, it’s an existential crisis of a song, which is quite an achievement for something which namechecks Baldock.

Is there another song anywhere which mentions Baldock?  It’s the kind of place which only Steven Wilson would think to set to music, I think, but if he’s referring to a specific lay-by (rest area for those non-Brits among you), then I’ve probably driven past it several times.  It eventually turns into a kind of round, with the lyrics interweaving in a way designed to invoke a kind of out-of-body experience.  It might also provoke one, under the right circumstances.  Not to be listened ot in a lay-by east of Baldock, I’d suggest.

More muscular bass introduces Strip the Soul, which – look, if this is an album about anything, it’s about the sociopath and the serial killer, and while that’s not exactly the first thing you think of when dreaming up a concept, it gives the whole album a kind of ominous sense, which perhaps reaches its apogee in this song.  Not for the first time, the protagonist hints at his ‘faulty wiring’, and there’s definitely a through line to a number of these songs which the music illustrates, being appropriately dark and menacing when needed, which in Strip the Soul is pretty much the whole time.  It’s dense and dark, and thank goodness it’s not the last track on the album.

We do need to have something more hopeful to end on, and while I’m not convinced that Collapse the Light into Earth provides it lyrically, it certainly does the job musically.  Starting from a simple piano line, it gradually fills in the spaces around the voice as it pleads for a little understanding and human company.  I don’t think you can stretch the concept of this album to the point here each song is delivered by the same protagonist, and in fact, I’d go so far as to hope not, as the previous narrators have confessed to some things which can’t just be forgiven by a sumptuous melody and a full-figured string accompaniment.

But it’s a magnificent way to go out – this most remarkable album ending on an emotional and musical hope for redemption and acceptance which becomes almost spiritual in the end, as everyone seems to ascend out of sight, borne aloft on strings and harmonies, leaving only the dogged pianist behind to provide an anchor.

I’ve already alluded to the visual similarity between this and OK Computer; I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that the two albums had a similar effect on me – in both cases, I was fully immersed in the world of the band’s imagination, and in both cases, challenged to think again about music I thought I knew and understood.  I may not have heard it until it was several years old, and established as perhaps the pinnacle (perhaps; see below), but it shook me out of my musical complacency, and everything which follows in this list is here because I took a punt on In Absentia.

I’m going to miss music magazines if they eventually go.

Any other albums by this artist to consider?

Several.  I think, other than this, Deadwing is my favourite, but you should definitely also listen ot Fear of a Blank Planet.  Delightfully, and somewhat surprisingly, there’s actually a new Porcupine Tree album, Closure / Continuation, which I recommend wholeheartedly.  A hiatus of more than ten years doesn’t seemed to have done them any harm at all, and it’s a spectacular return to form.

Compilations to consider?

Now this is tricky.  Porcupine Tree compilations emerge from time to time, but they are almost exclusively offcuts, b-sides and rarities.  There isn’t any such thing as a full PT retrospective.  As with most Prog bands, it’s probably best to dive in to the albums anyway.

Live albums?

All sorts of DVDs, and strange limited edition things exist.  See below for the DVD recommendation, but there’s a live download-only album called Atlanta which behaves the way traditional live albums used to, and an actual album called Octane Twisted which is basically a live version of the The Incident album, but some versions of which include other tracks.  I have a suspicion that there will be a live album following the Closure/Continuation  tour later this year, though…

Anything else?

Well, if you wait a couple of weeks, I’ll have all sorts of Steven Wilson stuff to recommend, but in the meantime, I do recommend the Anesthetize live DVD, which is broadly a live rendition of the Fear of a Blank Planet album.  There will be more in a couple of weeks, though – watch this space…

Posted in 60at60, Music, Writing | Tags: 60at60, InAbsentia, PorcupineTree, progrock, StevenWilson |

Richard Watt

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