Art-rock band no-man were founded in 1987 when Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness started writing music together. They briefly flirted with mainstream success in 1990 when their single release colours was Single Of The Week in Melody Maker and Sounds, leading to record label and publishing deals. Wilson went on to have much more success with Porcupine Tree and as a solo artist, but no-man continued to release albums sporadically, including their most recent, love you to bits in 2019. The duo have more recently collaborated on their podcast The Album Years.
‘Pigeon Drummer’ comes from the band’s sixth album Schoolyard Ghosts released in May 2008. The song evolved from a demo by Tim Bowness called ‘City Sounds’ which can be heard here. Bowness later used the lyrics on ‘wherever there is light.’ The track ‘Pigeon Drummer’ was written at a time when Wilson was starting to move away from Porcupine Tree to focus on his solo career. His first solo album Insurgentes was released in November 2008.
What is remarkable about this track, and some of the songs on Insurgentes, is the sudden and shocking descent into extreme noise after a beautifully melodic section. This happens very quickly on‘Pigeon Drummer’ after only about 30 seconds. When Wilson uses the same technique on Insurgentes, on songs like ‘Salvaging’, the noise section appear much later in the track. Wilson had been listening to the noise project Merzbow, started in 1979 by the Japanese artist Masami Akita, and enjoying the disruptive effect the use of noise had on melodic tracks, like obliterating an Old Master painting with black ink.
Wilson has often spoken of his love of cinema, and the term ‘cinematic’ often applies to both the sound of his music and the structure of his songs. Bowness’s demo version, ‘City Sounds’ and ‘Pigeon Drummer’ share a cinematic structure. ‘Pigeon Drummer’ opens with a music box. After a burst of noise, there’s a guitar theme that might remind some listeners of the guitar at the start of ‘Dream is Collapsing’ from Hans Zimmer’s score for Inception (2010). But if that film is science-fiction, a deeply philosophical, multi-layered thriller, the no-man song is perhaps closer in structure to the European art-house movies Wilson so admires. The juxtaposition of sweetly haunting melodic sections with extreme noise has the non-linear narrative of films by the Spanish iconoclast Luis Buñuel.
The track also seems to draw from another film genre; horror. The song adopts the trope of contrasting an insouciantly sun-lit scene with a subsequent scene of violent horror. The music box could have come from Philip Glass’s score for the original Candyman film. The tolling bell, and the ethereal choir could also have come from a horror film score. There’s also something unsettling about Bowness’s vocals, which are as sweetly and gently delivered as ever but heavily compressed to give them a slightly inhuman quality, a technique Wilson often uses on Porcupine Tree albums such as on the songs about serial killers on In Absentia (2002)
Whether you choose to view ‘Pigeon Drummer’ as a slice of art/noise rock, a homage to the structure of avant-garde European cinema, or the soundtrack to a horror film, it’s an extremely evocative and effective piece of music.
This post was updated on 29 August 2023 at 10.50 to add references to Bowness’s demo version ‘City Sounds.’
When art briefly triumphed over commerce in album cover design
****
The writer Ian MacDonald described the Beatles song Revolution 9 as ‘the world’s most widely distributed avant-garde artefact.’ The collage of sound, influenced more by German experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen than by Chuck Berry, sneaked into many homes under the anonymous white cover of The Beatles’ White Album in 1968. Another piece of contemporary abstract art sneaked into countless homes in 1973 and has continued to do so ever since; the cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. It was designed by the company Hipgnosis, founded in the late 1960s by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. The image of light refracted through a prism has become one of the most recognisable designs of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, not least because the album has sold tens of millions of copies across the world. As Liam Gallagher points out in this film, this was a way of bringing art to the masses at a time when art in rock music was more important than commerce.
Hipgnosis is a play on the words ‘hip’ (meaning ‘cool’ in 60s hip parlance) and ‘gnosis’ meaning mystic knowledge. There is some disagreement amongst the contributors to this fascinating documentary as to who came up with the name, but it seems to have come from graffiti written by Pink Floyd’s early singer and guitarist, Syd Barrett. Thorgerson and Powell grew up in Cambridge with members of Pink Floyd, before moving to London and dropping some ‘tabs of acid’ which unlocked their creative juices in the new partnership. All three surviving members of Pink Floyd are interviewed in the film, as are Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel and Graham Gouldman of 10cc. This satisfyingly complete roster of rock royalty is joined by Powell himself who provides an insightful running commentary (Thorgerson died in 2013).
The film’s director Anton Corbijn, perhaps best known for his 2007 Joy Division biopic Control, films the interviews recorded for this documentary in stark black and white. This means that they match the extensive black and white photographic and movie archive footage of Hipgnosis at work which is one of the highlights of the film. The narrative is simple but effective, mostly consisting of an analysis of many of the covers that Hipgnosis designed. The covers themselves bring a particular joy, shown in glorious detail on the big screen. They were from the days before digital manipulation meant that almost any image could be created on a computer, and artificial intelligence could design limitless new ones. In the glory days of Hipgnosis, if you needed an image of a sheep sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch on a beach in Hawaii, you had to fly to Hawaii. And get the couch specially made. And borrow the only sheep in the area specially for the shoot. And sedate the sheep… All for a tiny image that was much smaller than the lettering on the cover of 10cc’s 1980 album Look Hear? Sometimes, it could be argued that all the effort wasn’t worth it, as in the case of Wings Greatest which does look as if it has been photoshopped rather than created half way up a mountain.
The cover of 10cc’s album Look Hear? Look carefully and you can see the sheep
For the music fan, part of the fun of this film lies in the tiny details; being able to guess which classic cover is coming up next by listening closely to the music which introduces it. And although many of the stories will be well known to fans of the bands, there are small but exciting revelations; we hear that Syd Barrett went to the offices of Hipgnosis before he went to the studio to see Pink Floyd recording Wish You Here when – tragically – the other members of the band didn’t recognise him at first. Another enlightening detail is not just hearing the often-told story of the flying pig escaping its moorings during the photo shoot for Pink Floyd’s Animals, but seeing it happen on archive film.
Some of the work of Hipgnosis was critical of the music business, perhaps most famously illustrated in the photograph on the cover of Wish You Were Here of a man who is being ‘burned’ by the record company executive who is shaking hands with him. But Hipgnosis became part of the music industry and its excesses, charging tens of thousands of dollars for an album cover, travelling across the world on photo shoots, touring with bands and flying to America by Concorde. Ultimately however, whilst spending so much record company money, Powell and Thorgerson created a body of work that transcended commerce and became art. The last word of the film is left to Noel Gallagher. Having celebrated the work of Hipgnosis throughout the documentary, he is asked why he never used them to design one of his own album covers. He wryly admits that he couldn’t afford them.
Reference: Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties by Ian McDonald (Fourth Estate 1994)
You wait 12 years for a Train… then two come at once
For 12 years between their gig at the Royal Albert Hall in London in October 2010 and their next London gig at Wembley Arena in November 2022 it appeared that Porcupine Tree would never play live again. Following their 2022 tour in support of their new album Closure/Continuation, the band announced a festival tour in the summer of 2023, and Thursday night’s gig, part of Manchester’s Sounds of the City series at Castlefield Bowl, was the only UK date on that tour.
The gig began with some parish notices from lead singer and songwriter Steven Wilson. He expressed mild disappointment at the weather – the combination of outdoors, Manchester and the music of Porcupine Tree would surely have led to rain rather than the glorious sunshine that graced the allegedly ‘rainy’ City. Only the sight of a Joy Division tee-shirt in the audience restored some sense of normality.
On a more serious note, Wilson announced that sadly the band’s touring bass player Nate Navarro wouldn’t be able to appear due to a ‘serious family emergency’ which had forced him to return home. Wilson apologised, saying Navarro’s parts would be played on tape, and introduced the ‘invisible bass player.’ The crowd duly clapped the invisible man.
The other technical issue was that the sound of Gavin Harrison’s drums, at least from the verdant slope at the back of the Bowl, was quite boomy at first, threatening to dominate the rest of the band. This could be attributed to the acoustics of an outdoor bowl. It was certainly no reflection on Harrison’s playing, which was reliably excellent throughout. Fortunately, the problem was fixed only a few songs in to the two hour set.
Much of the set was the same as the Wembley Arena gig, although the shortened time available in Manchester meant that some tracks from the new album were dropped. A welcome new addition was Mellotron Scratch from the 2005 album Deadwing which was recently re-released in a Deluxe Edition which Wilson, with typically wry humour, said came as an ‘overpriced package.’ The rhythmic fervour at the start of the track was almost danceable, then a dreamlike mellotron choir joined with gorgeous backing vocals, leading to a funky verse section. An atmospheric glockenspiel led to heavy metal riffs which would have pleased the many audience members sporting heavy metal tee-shirts – more than Wilson himself said he had expected to see.
Heavy metal fans would also have been pleased by another highlight, the epic longform song Anesthetize from 2007’s classic album Fear of a Blank Planet. Wilson teased the audience by saying that there is an album of that name, just by way of a public service announcement and that didn’t necessarily mean the band was going to play any of it; but he soon obliged by launching into the song. Some fans mouthed the words in awestruck reverence. Others pointed towards the stage with heavy metal gestures. Tour guitarist Randy McStine matched the virtuosity of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson who played a solo on the original album track, but in his own unique style. Wilson provided funky electric piano at one point, and keyboard player Richard Barbieri brought piercing guitar-like sounds and warm synth washes. Perched magisterially above the band on his drum throne, Harrison’s brought loose-limbed but disciplined dexterity to his huge kit. Another highlight from the same album was Sleep Together, in which Wilson played a syncopated keyboard solo. The crowd continued to clap along to the main beat, and weren’t put off by the syncopation. Only a prog/metal crowd can do this (probably).
But Wilson also demonstrated a different side, more contemplative, a 21st century folk troubadour in versions of the songs which were sometimes gentler than the album versions, such as the opening section of Chimera’s Wreck and the final section of Harridan, both from the new album. He joked, ‘Thank you, Glastonbury!’ after the latter and later invited the crowd to join him in a Glastonbury-style sing a long in an old song – The Sound of Muzak – written by a ‘visionary’ (one Steven Wilson) The audience cheerfully obliged, joining him in the chorus that, ironically, bemoans the commodification and devaluing of music.
Image from visitmanchester.com
The previous concert in London had ended with fan favourite Trains, which at the time of writing has had very nearly 30 million plays on Spotify. Appropriately, a train track runs high along one side of Castlefield Bowl. ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if a train would come now’, opined Wilson. When one failed to appear the crowd managed to conjure one up by helpfully shouting, ‘Train, train, train’. When the ’60-ton angel’ of the song appeared there was a huge cheer, which must have puzzled the passengers. A magical end to an excellent evening.
In 2011, talking to Grant Moon of Prog about his second, jazz-infused, solo album Grace for Drowning, Steven Wilson said it’s easy to forget the role jazz played in the birth of prog rock, ‘it was when pop musicians started to incorporate their love of jazz and classical that progressive emerged.’ He cited Bill Bruford who played with Yes and King Crimson but was a jazz drummer at heart, and King Crimson co-founders Michael Giles and Ian McDonald who ‘both grew up listening to jazz’. Wilson said that later prog groups moved away from their jazz origins, but The Mars Volta retained the spirit of jazz at The Apollo, Manchester last night. There was fierce virtuosity from all the musicians, and very long solos Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on guitar – so long that two gentlemen in the row in front of me went to the toilet during one solo and came back before the solo had finished – and from Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on keyboards. Rather than earnestly recreating songs from their albums note-for-note, the band embraced the spirit of improvisation that marks the finest jazz. Remarkably though, vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala was able to replicate his stratospherically high vocals from the records without any strain.
But prog or jazz are labels that are too restrictive for the band. Perhaps what best defines them is the joyful virtuosity of prog and jazz, the percussive force and dance rhythms of some Latin American music, and sometimes the directness of indie music. At one point an enthusiastic audience member at the front of the mosh pit raised two fingers in the classic heavy metal ‘sign of the horns’, but sadly (for him perhaps) no heavy metal was forthcoming from the band.
The two leaders dominated the stage physically as well as musically. Guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez made repeated, anxiously angular runs from his position near the centre of the stage to face new drummer Linda-Philomène Tsoungui, perhaps to that everything was ok with her. He needn’t have worried; her drumming was phenomenally good. At the start of the show, singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala appeared gradually and almost apologetically on a crest of dry ice , but after that he confidently roamed the stage, sometimes swinging his mic like Roger Daltrey, at other times swinging his hips to the infectious rhythms. Strangely, at a distance, Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala looked rather like two indie rock heroes – Elvis Costello and Robert Smith of The Cure.
In a similar way to prog band Porcupine Tree, The Mars Volta were put on hiatus by their leader for around a decade – Porcupine Tree returning with a new album and a triumphant tour in 2022. The Mars Volta also returned with a new, self-titled, album last year (released in an acoustic version as Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón earlier this year). But whereas Porcupine Tree played most of their new album on their last tour, The Mars Volta played only a handful of tracks from the new album, instead dipping into their early back catalogue with several tracks from De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003) and Frances the Mute (2005). The audience appreciated their choice – those two albums have become classics of the band’s eclectic, ambitious, frenetic and uplifting style.
Source: Steven Wilson on Grace For Drowning by Grant Moon, Prog magazine 2011, republished by Loudersound.com September 26, 2021
New 5.1 mix places the listener in the middle of a dystopian farmyard.
Pink Floyd recorded Animals in 1976 and it was released early the following year. It sits uncomfortably in the band’s catalogue, preceded by the pristine, aching absences of Wish You Were Here and followed by the sprawling psychodrama of The Wall. The production is very different from other classic Pink Floyd albums recorded in the 1970s. The Dark Side of the Moon is warm, rich, multi-layered. Wish You Here is clean, sparse and still sounds contemporary. The Wall sounds luxuriant and epic, matching the album’s vast ambition and narrative sweep. In contrast, Animals is brutal and – by Pink Floyd’s standards – unvarnished.
So why is Animals, sonically so different from its peers? The band’s drummer Nick Mason, in his witty and revealing memoir Inside Out provides some clues. The band had just built its own studios at Britannia Row in North London. The walls were covered in lignacite, a breeze-block like material which efficiently absorbed sound but made the studio look, in Roger Waters’ words, like a ‘prison’. Mason says the studio, with its cramped control room had, ‘the grim and claustrophobic qualities of a nuclear bunker – although obviously much more stressful…’
The band had also abandoned the luxury of using a tape operator/expert engineer, hoping to bring a new immediacy to the recording process. Incidentally, when Mason and Waters engineered the recording of a guitar solo by David Gilmour they managed to erase it. The austere approach and atmosphere created, in Mason’s words, ‘a workman-like mood’ in the studio.
The simplicity of the mix was perhaps also influenced by external factors. Punk rock had launched a vicious but perhaps necessary assault on the excesses of prog rock. Pink Floyd, darlings of counter-culture in the 1960s were now seen as irrelevant dinosaurs. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols famously sported a Pink Floyd tee-shirt with the words ‘I hate ‘ scrawled with apparent venom above the band’s name (although he later admitted that this was more a piece of theatre than a statement of fact.) Pink Floyd’s response – perhaps unconscious – was to create an album that is as dark and cynical as anything that punk produced. Adopting the anthropomorphic satire of George Orwell’s 1945 novella Animal Farm, the album divides humankind into dogs, pigs and sheep. While Johnny Rotten claimed to be an anarchist, Waters created a dystopian view of society that was equally bleak. And while Rotten sang that the ‘The fascist regime…made [the Queen] a moron’, Waters addressed moral arbiter Mary Whitehouse as a ‘charade’ and a ‘house proud town mouse.’
It is perhaps strange that Animals hasn’t been released in a surround sound mix until now. Pink Floyd pioneered the use of surround sound in a live setting – according to Far Out magazine the world’s first ever surround sound concert was performed by the band in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in May 1967. (The band had a quadraphonic sound system which used the wonderfully-named Azimuth Co-ordinator, a kind of joystick, to send the sound flying around the audience’s heads). Eventually in 2018 Waters announced a surround sound mix of the album, which was further delayed until 2022 due to a dispute about the liner notes. Ironically, the 16-page booklet that comes with the DVD-audio of the album reviewed here doesn’t include liner notes.
As well as the 5.1 mix, the DVD includes the 2018 stereo remix, both by James Guthrie. It also features the original 1977 stereo mix by Brian Humphries. The remix strips back the original, making it at times even simpler. For instance on the two short Pigs on the Wing tracks that bookend the album, Waters’ vocals are much drier than on the original 1997 mix. This gives a greater sense of emotional intimacy to the only songs that provide an escape from the violent dystopia of the rest of the album.
The surround sound experience on the DVD is enhanced by the gorgeous photograph on the TV screen which updates the classic image from the original album cover, which looks like an Old Master oil painting perhaps from the Dutch School of the seventeenth century. It’s replaced by a luminous contemporary portrait of Battersea Power Station, which has recently re-opened as a shopping and leisure destination with new apartments. Cleverly, the lighting of the photograph gradually changes as the songs progress.
The longest track on the album is Dogs, the only one which is co-written by Gilmour with Waters, all the others being written by Waters alone. The first part of the song features one of Gilmour’s best vocal performance – raw, cynical, bleak. The surround sound mix places the main band either in front or sometimes at the sides. The mix builds on this solid platform and highlights the two double-guitar solos that appear in the rear speakers. But the visceral single guitar solo remains resolutely in front. The revelation here is Rick Wright’s keyboards – they appear in the rear speakers with a new clarity, or fly across the surround sound image. Their most imaginative use is in the extended instrumental section played as the protagonist is dragged down to his death by drowning. While Mason provides a measured rock beat, Wright’s keening keyboards provide anguished and mesmeric Tangerine Dream-like instrumental fireworks which are all the more effective for being isolated behind the listener. The track ends with Waters taking over vocal duties from Gilmour, with a repeated mantra beginning with the words ‘Who was…’ at the beginning of each line, almost a photographic negative of Eclipse the final track of The Dark Side of the Moon. The epic richness of the latter contrasts with the bitterness of the former track with Waters’ vocals so heavily compressed they leave the listener emotionally drained.
Pigsdemonstrates the efficacy of the new surround sound mix – instruments are well separated, making them much clearer than in the original stereo mix. The guitar is now so well-defined that you can almost touch it, and the vocals feel much more intimate, particularly in the chorus. The sound world is unremittingly bleak; the synths as they drift downwards seem to provide a glimpse into the abyss. If there is a weakness in the track, it’s the extended instrumental section which is rather repetitive and lacking in musical interest, and now feels dated with its use of a vocoder. The track picks up again however with swirling keyboards which perhaps imitate the flying pig, and an almost funky third verse. Gilmour’s guitar solo is one of the simplest he has ever played, focused, anguished and less bluesy than his usual style.
The last long track on the album, Sheep begins with the listener in a field of those ruminant animals, soon joined by Wright’s gloriously luminous keyboards in the rear speakers. Waters provides a simple bassline and appropriately histrionic vocals which become dehumanised as they morph into synth parts. Gilmour’s guitar parts are brutally funky. The instrumental section marks a return of the drowning section from Dogs, with the ‘stone’ that drags down the dying man haunting the mix. A majestic synth duet leads to the ‘prayer’ section as the song drifts into a reverie of contemplation. The spoken prayer – much clearer now than in the original mix – is a vicious parody of Psalm 23 (‘The Lord is my shepherd…’). And while the sheep at first seem to accept that they will become ‘lamb cutlets’, it soon becomes clear that a time of quiet prayer – ‘quiet reflection, and great dedication’ – gives the humble sheep chance to rise up against the dogs. The sheep attack one of the dogs, ‘Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream’; the final word ‘scream’ is suitably terrifying in surround sound. The track ends with the death of the dogs, Gilmour’s shimmering and triumphant guitar giving the track an epic feeling of rock’n’roll celebration.
There’s a lot to admire in this new surround sound mix, which gives the album a new clarity and foregrounds many of the instrumental parts. The raw power of the album is undeniable. But perhaps it’s still a little difficult to love.
Bibliography
Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason (Weidenfeld & Nicolson September 2011)
John Lydon: I don’t hate Pink Floyd by Sean Michaels The Guardian February 2010
Revisiting the moment Pink Floyd delivered the world’s first surround sound concert by Joe Taysom Far Out Magazine May 2020
Ten classic tracks from the early albums from On The Sunday of Life (1992) to Stupid Dream (1999)
In November 2022, Porcupine Tree made a triumphant return to London to play live at London Arena in front of over 12,000 fans after a hiatus of over twelve years. The event was described by The Times as ‘a prog-rock comeback of propulsive perfection.’
Porcupine Tree began essentially as a solo project for Steven Wilson, a fictitious band he had created to amuse himself. On the band’s first album, On The Sunday Of Life, some of the lyrics were written by his friend Alan Duffy, but otherwise Wilson wrote and performed the whole record. By the second album, Up The Downstair he began to be joined by other musicians and by the third album The Sky Moves Sideways Porcupine Tree had become a full band, largely so that Wilson could have his music played live.
Two decades later, the band began a run of classic albums that began with In Absentia in 2002. But the early albums have a great deal to offer, not just because they show the fascinating development of the band from psychedelia to their mature style, but also because they contain some very strong songs that demonstrate Wilson’s excellent songwriting, producing and arranging skills from the very start of his career.
On The Sunday of Life (1992)
Radioactive Toy
A song about nuclear war. The ‘radioactive toy’ which provides the ‘freedom to destroy’ suggests the words of Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, who quoted from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’ when he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on 16 July 1945. The following month, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The track is closely related to ‘A Smart Kid’ from Porcupine Tree’s fifth album Stupid Dream, which describes the effects of nuclear war.
Lyrically ‘Radioactive Toy’ is very sophisticated. It shows Wilson’s early ability to write poetic lyrics that encapsulate a mood or an idea very elegantly and with great economy, as in the bleak line describing disposal of a body after a nuclear war,
Pour me into a hole, inform my next of kin
The same level of sophistication can be found in the musical structure and feel of the song; only the first few minutes feature vocals, after which it becomes a long instrumental. The long form song has been a feature of Wilson’s writing throughout his career, both with Porcupine Tree and his later solo projects.
The bass line of ‘Radioactive Toy’ is very reminiscent of ‘Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2’ from Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979); it is in the same key as well, although it is slower, bringing a more ominous feel. The guitar parts are in a similar style to those of David Gilmour and lyrically the dark theme is very Floydian, leading some early fans of Porcupine Tree to hope that the band would be the next Pink Floyd.
Whether or not the Pink Floyd comparison is valid, the track is the most satisfying on the album, a real highlight, and it gives a fascinating insight into the future direction the band would take. The fact that it is a personal favourite of Wilson’s is shown by his choice of the song for the setlist for the first ever live gig that Porcupine Tree played, in December 1993. He was still playing it twenty years later, on the 2013 tour supporting his solo album The Raven that Refused to Sing.
And The Swallows DanceAbove The Sun
The lyrics for this early track were written by Alan Duffy. According to the sleeve notes for the Stars Die compilation, they form a psychedelic poem about, ‘the contradictions of being trapped in boredom while surrounded by wonder.’ Duffy originally called the song ‘Like Ice On The Sun’ when he sent it to Wilson, but the name was changed later.
Wilson’s vocal delivery perfectly conjures up the mood of the lyrics, sounding breathless with excitement but bored at the same time, the repetition of the same rhythmic and lyrical pattern creating a trance-like effect. The rhythm is provided by a drum machine, with a similar feel to the drum break in James Brown’s 1970 song Funky Drummer. With its funky bassline and heavy echo on the voice, smooth synth pads and inventive guitar parts, the song has something of a long-lost early 1990s dance classic. The track also has a pleasing set of falling chords as it drifts languidly towards the words, ‘and the swallows dance above the sun.’ Although it is very different from most of the songs Wilson has written in the three decades since, there are signs here of a great songwriter finding his voice.
Up The Downstair (1993)
Always Never
This is one of a number of tracks on the album with lyrics by Alan Duffy. The song is about the different stages of a relationship, compressed into two lines,
I love you sometimes
Always never
The relationship is over now, and the narrator feels completely alienated from the addressee of the song and has become emotionally detached.
This track marks the debut of Colin Edwin as bass player. The bass line is less prominent than on many of the songs from later albums, but it is an auspicious start, demonstrating the inventiveness and great musicality that characterised Colin’s work throughout his career with the band. The song also features a riff that unites the guitar and bass, around two minutes in, that could have come from one of the much later albums if more distortion had been added, again an early sign of the much more heavy metal sound the band would later adopt.
The vocals in the verse sound completely resigned, reflecting the emptiness of the narrator’s feelings. The chorus is livelier, illustrating the fast movement of the relationship from beginning to end. It could be the chorus from a simple pop song, and sticks in the mind in the way that pop choruses often do. If the song stopped at three minutes, then it could be a single, but there are another four minutes of largely instrumental music to follow. After treading water for a while before the final verse is delivered, the track picks up momentum with a long guitar solo as it hurtles towards the conclusion, where again there is a brief moment of stasis leading into the title track.
Up The Downstair
According to the sleeve notes for Stars Die, this track is a ‘menacing trance epic.’ The song marks the introduction of keyboard player Richard Barbieri to the band. The track also features spoken words from Richard’s wife Suzanne, a writer and musician.
The spoken words are a stream of consciousness written by Wilson, including phrases like ‘Monuments burn into moments’ (the title of an earlier short track on the album) and
Black Sunday of sleep
Open for small angel escapes
The words are buried quite deep in the mix and are meant to create a surreal impression rather than being analysed in a conventional way.
The track begins with an ominous low drone which is joined by dystopian synth lines and a Mellotron choir which sounds like morose monks chanting. The synthesized bass line is trancelike, euphoric and mesmeric, endlessly looping back on itself. The heavily sequenced synth chords sparkle and glitter. The guitar part that arrives with a sudden change of key around four minutes is urgent, driving, and viscerally exciting.
At around seven minutes, the bass drops out and there is brief passage of introspection before the rhythm picks up again and tension builds as the track ascends to a climax, before dropping back into contemplation as the monks briefly return.
Being able to build up the dynamics over a long track (ten minutes in this case) has stood Wilson in good stead over his very long and productive career.
The Sky Moves Sideways (1995)
Stars Die
Although not on the original UK album release, this track did appear on the US release in 1995. It is a very strong track, suggesting the direction the band was heading in future albums, and it therefore seems strange that it was left off the original UK release. The track gives its name to the 2002 compilation Stars Die: The Delerium Years 1991–1997, which is an excellent introduction to Porcupine Tree’s early years.
The song is beautifully melancholy, with a simple but haunting chorus that consists of only the two words of the title, in a two-note rising phrase with luxurious backing vocals. The concept of stars dying suggests that in the long term everything dies, that humanity is fragile and ephemeral and that the Earth itself will eventually perish.
The sample at around 2:30 is of President Richard Nixon speaking from the Oval Office in the White House to the Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during the first Moon Landing in 1969. In what he describes as ‘the most historic telephone call ever made’, the President says that the astronauts’ achievements have inspired mankind to ‘redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquillity to Earth.’
Perhaps the mission to the Moon brings hope. Although the song itself does not suggest that ‘peace and tranquillity’ will come to Earth, it does end with an image of humanity blasting away into space, astronauts in ‘hyper sleep’, the deep coma-like sleep that is essential for long-distance space travel.
A Dislocated Day
On the original 1995 album all instruments on this track are performed by Wilson. Drums were added later by Gavin Harrison (who joined the band in 2002) for the 2004 re-release.
The track begins with a phone call which is not answered until the end, when Wilson is heard leaving a message. The rhythm is quite uneven and jerky, expertly creating a physical impression of the dislocation in the title. At the same time the sense of metaphorical dislocation from the rest of the world is beautifully expressed by the floating synthesisers and the detached vocals, drifting downwards as the track progresses. The surreal lyrics suggest that Wilson was still under the influence of Alan Duffy, retaining also some of Duffy’s quirky wit,
Stood beside an inlet
A starfish leads a dance
It dreams it is a human
And falls into a trance
The song ends with the recorded telephone message, in which Wilson gives us a glimpse of his thought processes about how the track could end, but rather than replacing that thought with music he leaves the raw material,
…acoustic guitar … feeding back towards the end. I think that would make quite an interesting ending. Anyway, let me know what you think and I’ll speak to you soon. Bye.
Signify (1996)
Dark Matter
This track was originally called ‘Toursong.’ According to the notes for the Stars Die compilation, it began life as, ‘a fairly drab account of life on the road and its attendant boredoms’, but the band’s manager Richard Allen and the other members of Porcupine Tree objected to the lyrics which amounted to, ‘came off stage, had a cup of tea, went to bed’. Wilson changed them so that they were, ‘about the business of being a musician and a product’, to make it a haunting meditation on the futility and emptiness of the life of touring artist.
The title ‘Dark Matter’ refers to the release of recordings which the record companies regard as ‘product’, something ephemeral, rather than of lasting artistic significance, a theme to which Wilson returned on the next album Stupid Dream,
Dark matter flowing out on to a tape
Is only as loud as the silence it breaks
Most things decay in a matter of days
The product is sold the memory fades
The song begins with darkly atmospheric synth washes, evoking the permafrost inside the tour bus,
Inside the vehicle the cold is extreme
The cold is a metaphor for a failure to engage with the outside world,
I fail to connect, it’s a tragic divide
The protagonist ruminates on the fact that music has become a full-time career, but that there are other, quicker ways to become famous when you are young,
To die young would take only 21 years
Gun down a school or blow up a car
The media circus would make you a star
The song features some gorgeous Hammond organ playing from Richard Barbieri, showing his love of vintage keyboards rather than using emulation software to recreate sounds digitally. Wilson’s vocals are very closely-mic’d in the verses, giving the impression that the listener is on the tour bus with him. Most unusually for a Porcupine Tree song, the verses feature backing vocals, presumably from Chris Maitland (although he does not receive a specific credit for this track); usually the lush vocal harmonies that are so characteristic of many of the band’s songs appear only in the choruses, although the chorus of this song also features rich harmonies.
The song includes an extended guitar solo section which lasts around two minutes, culminating in a short section where the bass and the guitar join each other for a riff in unison, not as heavy as on many of the later albums but perhaps a little taster of the heavier, riff-driven style.
Waiting(Phase One)
This track begins with the protagonist waiting to be ‘born again’, perhaps hoping for redemption, or at least for life to have some meaning. The repeated line, ‘Waiting … for the day when I will crawl away’ suggests hopelessness, even a desire for death.
According to the sleeve notes for Stars Die, drummer Chris Maitland loved singing the vocal harmonies on the song, but if forced to take only one of the tracks to a desert island he would choose Colin Edwin’s bass line because, ‘it’s so hypnotic and subtle.’ Wilson’s guitar playing is another highlight, beginning with gentle strummed acoustic guitar chords, with spacey, psychedelic electric guitar which explodes towards the end in a manic solo that seems to express the frustration felt by the protagonist.
Stupid Dream (1999)
Even Less
The song begins with a single held A on the strings, the note that classical orchestras always tune to, as if the orchestra were tuning up in anticipation. Slide guitars evoke a sunlit, humid American desert landscape, similar to that evoked by Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to the 1984 movie Paris, Texas. The guitars are doubled across the stereo channels so that they appear in both ears at once, a technique used extensively on later Porcupine Tree albums, particularly on heavy metal guitars, to add richness and bite.
But instead of remaining in an American setting, the song swiftly moves to an English landscape, as the same chords move from slide guitar to elemental distorted chords, almost punk-like in the simplicity of the chord progression. Acoustic guitar and piano accompany the description of a body being washed up on a Norfolk beach, a friend who, ‘could not be reached’, who has presumably committed suicide. There follows an even more disturbing image of another body, ‘a choirboy buried on the moor.’
The song ends with a series of heavy guitar chords in ‘Drop D’ tuning, where the bottom note of the guitar is tuned down by a whole note, a technique beloved of heavy metal bands and used extensively on later Porcupine Tree albums. As such, the song marks an important transition for the band, from earlier psychedelia to later progressive metal. But Wilson has not moved away from psychedelia yet – above the brutal, visceral crunch of the heavy metal chords floats a lovely Floydian guitar solo, complete with string bends, a technique often used by David Gilmour.
Wilson reprised the song at the Royal Albert Hall in London on his To the Bone Tour in March 2018 (Track eighteen on the Home Invasion concert DVD). He dedicated the song to people who had been listening to his music before the 21st century. Channelling his inner Billy Bragg, he reminded the audience what a great rhythm guitarist he is, and by stripping the track to the bone, what a powerful song writer he is.
Don’t Hate Me
This is the final song in a trilogy of songs on Stupid Dream about unrequited love. It begins with an image of a deserted London as light snow falls. The image of a train, often elsewhere a symbol of Wilson’s nostalgia for his childhood, here represents the emptiness of the scene as no-one get on or off the train. A relationship has broken up, and weary resignation that haunts the verses of the song. The chorus is more impassioned, as the unrequited lover, who is so, ‘tired and alone’, pleads not to be hated, a plea which is moderated by the deeply sarcastic line, ‘I’m not special like you.’
This is one of Porcupine Tree’s most atmospheric songs, with a jazz-inflected interlude switching between a laid-back flute solo and a more anguished saxophone, both played by Theo Travis, moving from resignation to bitter anger. The long instrumental interlude would be perfectly suited to a film noir movie, conjuring up an atmosphere of dark streets with silhouetted figures, and cigarette smoke curling through darkened rooms. Wilson has often spoken of his songs being like short films and this is a perfect example.
Bibliography
Porcupine Tree review — a prog-rock comeback of propulsive perfection by Dominic Maxwell, The Times 14 November 2022
Notes from Porcupine Tree – Stars Die: The Delerium Years 1991–1997 (Kscope 2002)
Swedish prog metal band celebrate three decades of music with audience choices
A work colleague was bemused when I told her I was going to London on Friday to see a prog metal band, ‘didn’t you do that last week?’ she said. I explained that I had been to see Porcupine Tree, who are prog rock rather than prog metal. But both bands transcend their genre labels, as demonstrated in this concert by opener Ghost of Perdition which begins with death metal vocals and guitars but soon embraces pastoral folk. Both bands also feature leaders who are endlessly restless, refusing to repeat themselves. As Opeth’s leader Mikael Åkerfeldt said during the gig, he could easily have rewritten the band’s classic album Blackwater Park (2001) for every subsequent album, just as Steven Wilson could have carried on writing new versions of Porcupine Tree’s classic Fear of a Blank Planet (2007). But both men have refused to compromise, sometimes alienating fans but also gaining new ones by constantly changing. The two men have also been close friends since Wilson worked on Blackwater Park and more recently their Storm Corrosion album (2012).
Åkerfeldt did please fans however by allowing them to choose the setlist by picking one song from each of the band’s 13 studio albums to celebrate Opeth’s 30th anniversary. This led to the slightly strange choice of Black Rose Immortal from the 1996 album Morningrise. Åkerfeldt admitted that his aim was to write a song for the first album which was over twenty minutes long. It wasn’t ready in time so he put it on the second album. He conceded that he built the track by stitching together short sections. The resulting song is episodic almost to the point of being disjointed, but the band made a good effort at playing it live for the first time.
Elsewhere, long-form structures worked much better, as on The Moor (from 1999’s Still Life) with its dreamy opening followed by driving metal riffs, and closing number Deliverance (from the 2002 album of the same name) with its mesmerising syncopated final section. And throughout the concert Åkerfeldt’s endlessly inventive songwriting was illustrated by songs that – remarkably – he began writing at the age of 19, obtaining the band’s first record deal by sending a cassette to a record company with 15 seconds of rehearsal footage on it. His amazing ear for unusual chord progressions and rich harmonies was evident throughout, particularly in the beautiful harmony vocals for Eternal Rains will Come (from Pale Communion 2014).
Åkerfeldt has worked very hard to get Opeth to its current level of success, and he is obviously enjoying it; his onstage persona was relaxed, taking time to tune his guitar and chat amiably to the audience between songs. His singing voice was equally relaxed, his death metal growls rich and evocative and his clean vocals searing and potent, often within the same song. The audience were in good voice too, joyfully singing along when Åkerfeldt played a short excerpt from a song by another great singer – George Michael’s Faith. New drummer Waltteri Väyrynen (Paradise Lost, Bodom After Midnight and Bloodbath) was equally relaxed, and seems to have fitted into his new band really well already, happily embracing Opeth’s prog metal, blues, jazz and folk with equal aplomb.
The video screens were vertically split into three, meaning that from the balcony seats it looked at times as if Väyrynen and keyboard player Joakim Svalberg were swimming in a sea of fire or water. The images occasionally felt slightly generic but there was a stunning video for The Devil’s Orchard (from Heritage 2011) with a terrifying opening image of a woman falling from a high building into the abyss, matching the existential despair of the Nietzschean cry, ‘God is Dead.’
Like so many gigs, this one was delayed due to Covid, so the band are now in their 32nd year. Let’s hope that Åkerfeldt and friends continue to record and perform great music for many years to come.
Triumphant return of the band to London after 12 year hiatus
*****
Image credit: Mike Holmes
Last time Porcupine Tree played in London was just over 12 years ago, in October 2010. As band leader and main songwriter Steven Wilson recounts in detail in his new book Limited Edition of One, what should have been a career highlight performing in front of a sold-out Royal Albert Hall left him feeling empty. He walked away to pursue an increasingly successful solo career, leaving fans and critics wondering whether the band would ever record together or play live again. Then in June 2022 a new album appeared, Closure/Continuation followed by a tour that ended, appropriately in London again, at a packed Wembley Arena.
It would be presumptuous to assume any intimate knowledge of Wilson’s inner psyche, but he seemed to be in a very different mood this time. The fact that the band have already announced they are playing more dates at summer festivals next year suggests that he’s enjoying himself again. He seemed relaxed and happy to be onstage. He had every right to be. The sound was very good, the video back projections were varied and interesting, the lighting impressive, and the audience attentive. Most importantly, Wilson was in excellent voice, and the band at times were so locked in with each other they felt like the limbs of a single creature rather than individuals.
During Collapse the Light into Earth, mobile phone torches were raised by the audience, gently swaying in a sea of lights. Wilson, playing keyboards in this gentle, melancholy ballad was distracted by such a moving sight, saying that he forgot the words as a result. Some audience members turned away from the stage to survey the communal emotion. Near the end, Wilson tried to introduce a song and the persistent applause stopped him from speaking. He has been on a 30 year journey, always carving his out own path but sometimes wondering why his exceptional songwriting ability, fine musicianship, stunning work as a producer and re-mixer and surround-sound guru, deep insights into the contemporary condition and ability to attract virtuoso musicians to work with him have not resulted in the commercial success he deserves. So it was poignant that he chose to play Buying New Soul, one of Porcupine Tree’s hidden treasures, which describes Wilson’s continuing fight against the music industry – ‘I still rage and wage my little war’. The song ends with the depressing concept of selling out, of buying a ‘new soul at the start of every year’. Wilson no longer needs to worry about compromising his artistic integrity – his last two solo albums and the new Porcupine Tree album all made the top five in the UK. And he played to over 12,000 fans tonight, despite mostly being ignored by the media, television and radio.
The new album represents the first time Wilson collaborated with other band members in writing songs, and the concert felt like a true band effort rather than Wilson with a backing band. Richard Barbieri on keyboards provided his usual atmospheric synth washes but also some prominent solos, worthy of Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright. Gavin Harrison on drums was subtle and loose-limbed, organic and human, never showy but always virtuosic. Wilson jovially announced the two new members of the touring band, American musicians Randy McStine and Nate Navarro as coming from New York and Texas (which apparently are now part of the British Isles … who knew?) McStine was a revelation, a superb guitarist who provided distinctive solos. He not only contributed backing vocals but at times shared lead vocal duties with Wilson, testament to the quality of his singing, and the deserved confidence Wilson placed in him. Navarro brought tasteful bass playing, successfully filling the gap left by the band’s previous bass player Colin Edwin. The performances were excellent throughout, but highlights included Sleep Together and Halo when the band locked tightly into Harrison’s drumming to create rhythmic perfection. And it was a joy to hear the long prog rock anthem Anesthetize played live in full, just as Nick Mason recently toured the Pink Floyd epic Echoes .
The new album was well-represented and the tracks stood up well in comparison with older classics from Fear of a Blank Planet and In Absentia. It might have been better to have grouped together more of the tracks from different albums for the sake of stylistic consistency but that was a very minor issue. The backing videos added a greater emotional depth to many of the songs. Herd Culling showed a wolf drenched in blood-red light, a miniature horror film.
The official video for Herd Culling
The video for Sleep Together depicted multiple robotic creatures like the monster in Alien. The title track from Fear of a Blank Planet illustrated the song as an anthem for doomed youth. Perhaps the most moving of all was a new black and white video for Dignity based on the lyrics ‘Lost soul/Camped at the side of the road’ reminding us that rough sleepers still live on the street in the twenty-first century.
Wilson said the band would end the concert with a medley of rock classics including Sweet Home Alabama, Free Bird and Purple Rain. Before the audience recovered from its surprise at this, Wilson announced that the band would instead play the nearest that any of his ‘failures’ has been to being a hit, Trains, which has now been streamed over 27 million times on Spotify. Wilson has proved that he no longer needs to worry about ‘buying a new soul’ every year; his refusal to compromise has finally led to chart success, a loyal and devoted following, a reputation as one of the best re-mixers … and one of the best live experiences around.
Nick Holmes is the author of On Track … Porcupine Tree(2021) described by DPRP as ‘an essential purchase for fans of the band.’
Porcupine Tree return after 12 years’ hiatus with their new album which reached number 2 in the UK charts
Pink Floyd once satirised the music industry executive who said, ‘You gotta get an album out/You owe it to the people’ (Have a Cigar from their 1975 album Wish You Were Here). When Porcupine Tree went on an extended hiatus after their last concert in 2010, there was no pressure on them from a record company to ‘get an album out’. Band leader Steven Wilson had already launched what became an increasingly successful solo career. The other members of what is now known in copyright terms as ‘Porcupine Three’ were also pursuing their own careers. Keyboard player Richard Barbieri released a series of solo albums, most recently the troubled lockdown masterpiece Under a Spell. Drummer Gavin Harrison toured with King Crimson and became a member of The Pineapple Thief, and recorded a superb jazz fusion album Chemical Reactions with bass player Antoine Fafard.
In the meantime, another bass player was writing new material with Gavin Harrison – Steven Wilson himself. As long ago as 2012, Steven went round to Gavin’s house for a cup of tea and a chat. Gavin suggested that they should jam together, and the only instrument in Gavin’s home studio that resembled a lead guitar was a bass guitar. Pragmatism is the mother of creativity, so Steven picked up the bass and played it like a guitar player. Many years later, when promoting his most recent solo album, last year’s The Future Bites he said that he had fallen out of love with the guitar as the main source of his creativity, preferring to write on keyboards, particularly analogue synthesisers. When asked about the possible return of Porcupine Tree, he naturally always deflected the interviewer towards the solo work that he was promoting at the time, although a careful re-reading of some of those interviews now reveals that he was sometimes dropping hints that Porcupine Tree might come back at some stage, perhaps as a side-project to his solo career.
So, without any pressure or expectation, the three band members quietly wrote an album, now released under the intriguing title Closure/Continuation, suggesting that this could be the final chapter of the Porcupine Tree saga, or it could be the start of a new chapter. The lack of commercial or artistic pressure meant that the band were able to work in a completely new way. Previously, Steven Wilson had delivered songs to the band as fully completed demos which the band rerecorded. For the latest album, for the first time Steven wrote songs with the other band members, and all the instruments and vocals were performed by the three of them without any external collaborators. When their work was complete, they then offered it to several record companies, eventually going with the independent label Music for Nations who describe themselves as the ‘naughty corner of Sony Music UK, proving people wrong since 1983.’
The album has seven tracks, which are reviewed in more detail below, although streaming versions add another three tracks, Population Three, Never Have and Love in the Past Tense that are taken from the Deluxe Edition Box Set. The album is unusual in the band’s catalogue in the there is no over-arching concept as there is with many of their previous albums such as Fear of a Blank Planet. Steven Wilson’s own solo albums to date are based on a strong concept, except for the first album Insurgentes released in 2008. Perhaps the fact that songs were written piecemeal over a long period of time, and by all three band members rather than Steven Wilson on his own, meant that a concept was not appropriate this time, although the lyrics are all written by Steven Wilson and express some of the concerns he has visited on previous albums. To use a literary analogy, each song can be viewed as a self-contained short story rather than a chapter from a novel.
01 Harridan (Harrison, Wilson)
The title of this song has caused some online commentators to reach for their dictionary to discover that it means a haggard old woman. It’s an insult, or as the Oxford English Dictionary politely puts it, ‘usually a term of vituperation.’ Perhaps it leads listeners to expect a misogynistic rant, but instead the song is addressed to a man, making the term neutral. The man in question is a ‘gold man’, perhaps like the mythical King Midas whose every touch turned objects into gold, with a ‘silver tongue’ suggesting a powerful man who uses his eloquence to hide the truth which he keeps to himself. The truth in this case is that ‘you can only save yourself’. The chorus refers to hiding our cuts and our hurt from the world, appearing strong even at the point of death, ‘when we bite the dust’. The central character of the song could be a politician of the like that is dismantled in the third song on the album ‘Rats Return’, but it’s not made clear.
But the song is not completely bleak. The bridge section is much more tender, a gorgeous depiction of the ‘time of the almost rain’ which the next song Of the New Day reveals to be dawn. The beauty of the scene is poignantly combined with an expression of deep loss and regret; having ‘gone to earth’ to find love, the protagonist laments lost love, ‘and what is left without you?’ Wilson sings with a remarkable tenderness here, expressing a new vulnerability in his voice which seems to have begun on his previous solo album The Future Bites, showing a new confidence in his ability to use his voice as an expressive instrument.
The song was chosen as the first single from the album, and it was a good choice to relaunch the band on an unsuspecting world. It contains all the elements that became associated with the later Porcupine Tree, metal riffs, rich sound design, a wide range of dynamics, strong melodies, evocative lyrics and a sense of development as the track progresses. But there’s a new simplicity on this album, with pared-down production that bears a close relationship to the production style on The Future Bites. There’s less in the way of overt musical virtuosity than on previous Porcupine Tree albums, except unsurprisingly from Gavin Harrison on drums. At a recent Q&A session with the band in Leeds, Wilson and Barbieri amusingly recounted the arguments they had about who was the worst musician in the band, each trying to claim the crown and both (rightly) agreeing that Harrison is definitely the best musician in the band.
The track starts with Wilson playing perhaps the funkiest bass line ever heard on a Porcupine Tree record, with lovely ambient keyboards from Barbieri and fierce vocals from Wilson. In common with some of the other tracks on the album, the chorus is very short, giving a real sense of urgency. There’s also a yearning quality in the chords that lead up to the chorus. The song seems to have reached its end only about three minutes in after the contemplative bridge section, but it gathers itself again with fizzing guitar and a thunderous metal riff with driving guitar chords. The sound drops out with bubbling synths flying across the stereo picture, followed by a whimsical jazz section with Wilson almost scat singing in falsetto above. Another driving chromatic section follows with a triumphant return of the chorus and its matching riff. The coda to the song is a repeat of the bridge section, ending on an unresolved chord which disappears into noise. An inspiring ending to a superb opening song, announcing the group’s exultant return as if In Absentia was released only a year or two ago rather than 20 years ago.
02 Of The New Day (Wilson)
After the onslaught of the previous song, there follows a gentle ballad which expresses hope and optimism at the breaking of dawn, described by the Greek poet Homer as ‘rosy-fingered dawn’, a memorable image of a time here described by Wilson as ‘the hour of almost rain/When night becomes the day.’ It’s an image of rebirth, but as this is a Porcupine Tree song there are ‘tinges of darkness around the edges’ as Wilson admitted in a Twitter Listening Party with Tim Burgess of The Charlatans on 29 June. The darkness here seems to be the protagonist’s old life, which is still there despite the breaking dawn, ‘the old days that line up behind/The monolith of the new day.’
Although it’s superficially a simple song, behind the balladry lies the rhythmic genius of Gavin Harrison. Apparently Wilson told the band’s drummer that he wanted to write a song that had multiple time changes. This means that the song has a slightly stop-start feel but it’s so well executed that after the initial slight shock of the time changes it soon resides in the brain as a classic Steven Wilson ballad.
03 Rats Return (Harrison, Wilson)
This song is about politicians who ‘leave their principles at the door’ who ‘purge [their] guilt for nameless hoards’ (pedants will note that the correct spelling of the word is ‘hordes’). The idea of rats returning ties in with the more common image of rats leaving a sinking ship; in the song the rats are presumably returning to celebrate their complete control over the places they have laid waste by their policies. The hint of a nautical image becomes more of a theme as the album progresses.
The idea of psychopaths running society is something that preoccupies Wilson; in the video for the track Eminent Sleaze on The Future Bites he plays a character who represents the ultimate extremes of Capitalism as he watches the world end, leaving him as the sole survivor.
In Rats Return, the line ‘a conscience won’t help you win the war’ perfectly encapsulates the level of psychopathy that politicians often appear to need in order to be leaders. It’s a concept explored by journalist and broadcaster Jon Ronson in his fascinating book, The Psychopath Test, which looks at the lack of empathy in public figures,
“Serial killers ruin families,’ shrugged Bob. ‘Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.”
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson (Picador 2012)
Wilson makes it clear that he is referring to real political and military leaders when he lists ‘Genghis K’ (Genghis Kahn, the military leader who was responsible for the deaths of millions), ‘Pinochet’ (the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet) and ‘Mao Tse Tung’ (Chairman Mao, responsible for countless Chinese deaths during the Cultural Revolution).
The song is another exercise in rhythmic mastery from Harrison. On Twitter he pointed out that the rhythmic pattern is so complex it takes, ‘at least half the song before people realise that there is a repeat of a four-bar syncopation, in which every bar is different.’ As a result, the rhythm is ‘spiky’, which suits the song’s sentiments perfectly. The main guitar riff could have come from the progressive metal style of some of the songs on the previous three Porcupine Tree albums, but the song also has a contemporary feel due to the sparse production. It feels like another classic Porcupine Tree song in the making.
04 Dignity (Barbieri, Wilson)
This song addresses one of Wilson’s favourite themes, the role of ambition in our lives and the failure to achieve our dreams – the ‘stupid dream’ described in the album of the same name in 1999. On the Twitter Listening Party he said that Dignity describes a guy who ‘really used to be someone’, a film star or a CEO who is now living on the street, and ‘all the pathos that goes with that downfall.’ But there is also hope – the central character retains his dignity despite his downfall, ‘your dignity will never go and your mind is pretty sound’
The song includes a reference to the final section of T. S. Eliot’s epic poem The Waste Land, What the thunder said, in the line ‘Tell yourself it’s just what the thunder said.’ The first part of that section of the poem refers to the aridity and sterility of life in the 20th century (the poem was written in 1922, so is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year). The poem ends with the Sanskrit word ‘Shantih’ repeated three times. The word Shantih, used at the end of Hindu religious texts the Upanishads, means peace. Eliot himself in his Notes to the poem described it as the equivalent of the Christian concept of ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ or the Peace that God brings. In the context of the song, which has no overt religious message, the fact that the poem ends on an ineffably positive note could suggest that if the protagonist in the song ignores what the thunder said, and instead follows the final message of the poem, this could provide hope despite his downfall. Whether Wilson had the poem in mind when he wrote the song is unclear, although the final section also has a reference to hooded hordes swarming over endless plains, which could relate to the anonymous ‘nameless hordes’ referred to in Rats Return.
The song starts with the sound of children playing, rather like opening of First Regret from Wilson’s fourth solo album Hand.Cannot.Erase, a brief evocation of the nostalgic theme that has often appeared in his work. A haunting wordless vocal, pure in tone, is provided by the Swedish singer and multi-instrumentalist Lisen Rylander Löve who has worked with Richard Barbieri. A cascading rock guitar line leads to a syncopated vocal line with folky backing vocals provided by Wilson himself. The chorus has a soaring lead synth line which rises in gentle euphoria. The chord structure uses a classic songwriting technique beloved of The Beatles and others, the change from major to minor on the words ‘you stare at the sun’, here describing a moment of hope as the sun breaks through, followed by a return to melancholy on the final word ‘done’. These chord progressions give the song an instant feeling of warm nostalgia, as if the song had already been heard many times before in a dream.
05 Herd Culling (Harrison, Barbieri, Wilson)
The track opens with the visceral lines, ‘Son, go fetch the rifle now/There’s something in the yard’, throwing us immediately into a compelling psychodrama. As a lyricist, Steven has a poet or script writer’s ability to enter a story in medias res, half way through a story, the nature of which is gradually revealed as the song progresses, teasing the listener to extract the meaning of the song. In a fascinating and very detailed interview by the ever-perceptive Anil Prasad of Innerviews.org, Steven Wilson revealed the meaning of this song. He later retracted, saying he would prefer listeners to make up their own minds, so those who prefer their views not to be influenced by the lyric writer’s thoughts should skip to the next paragraph now. Wilson told Prasad that the song was inspired by the story of Skinwalker Ranch, near Ballard, Utah. Several accounts suggest that the ranch has been plagued by paranormal activities and UFOs, and a slew of books, films and documentaries have been published about it. The song describes the family’s attempts to defend themselves against aliens, ‘strange gods above the earth’ who may have landed to ‘cull a herd’ of cattle on the ranch. He told Prasad, ‘I remain skeptical [sic] when it comes to the UFO stuff and government coverups. But I love the stories.’ His fascination with ghost stories led him to write a collection of them that made up his third solo album, The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) released in 2013. On that album he used the stories to illustrate his thoughts about the human condition, and emotions such as regret and feelings of loss, rather than a scientific exploration of the existence or otherwise of ghosts. His scepticism is echoed in the chorus of the song, which consists of the single word ‘liar’, resentfully muttered at first then viciously spat out as his venom increases.
06 Walk the Plank (Barbieri, Wilson)
Another song about the corruption of power in the 21st century. On the Twitter Listening Party, Richard Barbieri described the song as being about ‘the sort of characters that are causing global trouble, a sign-of-the times commentary’. The nautical imagery is much more overt than on Rats Return; this time the rats have abandoned the sunken ship and ‘will never find their way back again.’
The song is very unusual in the Porcupine Tree canon in that it features almost entirely keyboards and drums, with very little if any guitar. To an extent, it shares the fiercely electronic sound of some of the songs on The Future Bites, particularly Eminent Sleaze although ironically much of that song was recorded using real instruments. If some of the songs on this new album feel like closure, finishing a chapter in the band’s previous history, this one feels forward-looking to new territories the band might explore in future if they carry on writing and recording together. Interestingly, on Twitter Richard Barbieri described the track as ‘the joker in the pack… if it went further it wouldn’t be Porcupine Tree.’ Steven Wilson said that if the band did work together again they would probably push towards a more keyboard-based sound with less prominence given to the guitar.
07 Chimera’s Wreck (Harrison, Wilson)
On Twitter, Wilson described this as ‘perhaps the most personal song on the album.’ It addresses a subject that has often troubled him, the nature of success and what we imagine that would look like when we are young. The ‘chimera’ described here is the illusion of the future, ‘what we imagine we want from life when we’re young probably wouldn’t have made us happy anyway.’ As mentioned above this was the theme of the Stupid Dream album, and it was also the theme of one of the hidden treasures of the Porcupine Tree back catalogue, ‘Buying New Soul’ which was recorded during the sessions for Lightbulb Sun which was released in 2000. In that song, Wilson describes his battle with the recording industry and his attempt to retain artistic integrity, ‘I still rage and wage my little war’ – but it ends with the depressing concept of selling out, of buying a ‘new soul at the start of every year’.
The personal nature of the song is emphasised by the reference to Wilson’s father, who passed away in 2011, and to whom he dedicated his second solo album Grace for Drowning, which was released later that year. Wilson began working on Chimera’s Wreck shortly after that, and the image of his father smiling at a child encapsulates their relationship in one short line. The reference to ‘A new town in the 60s’ is presumably Wilson’s home town of Hemel Hempstead, England. The new part of the existing town was completed in 1962, ‘out of concrete a design made for tomorrow’, and Wilson himself was born five years later in 1967.
The song uses sea imagery as on other parts of the album. It’s interesting that some of the imagery and language is quite archaic, almost arcane at times. This contrasts with the use of language on Wilson’s last two solo albums, which is much more direct. The final verse of this song refers to slipping the ‘wreck’ into a bottle, which presumably refers to the old practice of putting a model ship into a bottle. In this case the wrecked ship that has washed up on a shore is perhaps sealed in a bottle to because it’s no longer needed – a hopeful note on which to end the album. The robust backing vocals that appear at just over two minutes into the track have the feel of a sea shanty, and giving the song a nautical feel, a curious throwback to the 19th century. Musically, a strange but perhaps valid comparison is the music of Van der Graaf Generator, and in particular another epic track with a nautical theme, A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers from the 1971 album Pawn Hearts.Chimera’s Wreck shares the driving, repeated riffs of many of the Van der Graaf Generator songs, and their episodic nature, making it the most prog-rock song on the album.
Wilson has said that this is the best Porcupine Tree album, along with Fear of a Blank Planet and In Absentia. He also admits that ‘time will tell.’ It’s certainly by far the most collaborative album the band have ever released. The lack of an over-arching concept perhaps makes it more difficult to grasp initially than many of the previous albums, but individual tracks are very strong and as with most of Steven Wilson’s work it takes a while to give up its secrets, so repeated listens are recommended. It also maintains the consistently excellent levels of production that have characterised Wilson’s work for decades now, both as a producer and as an expert remixer of classic albums. Let’s hope that the new album, to quote one of the band’s own song titles, is the ‘Start of Something Beautiful’ rather than a final coda to their work.
For a detailed, track-by-track analysis of the previous 10 studio albums, bonus tracks, live albums and compilations see Porcupine Tree On Track by Nick Holmes, published in September 2021 by Sonicbond.
