Steven Wilson

What I expected to see, having gladly spent forty euros on tickets for this concert, was anything but a Porcupine Tree show. To understand why, it's enough to think of the two works released as Steven Wilson's solo efforts, namely the eclectic and varied "Insurgentes" and the (thoroughly) progressive "Grace For Drowning", which I admit I had never listened to before the show: too little time available, too tempting the challenge of discovering it for the first time in a live setting. I also certainly expected a technically stratospheric show (given the members of the band involved), technologically highly developed and musically flawless. What I truly did not expect, from Wilson the "solo artist", was such a fierce, heartfelt, emotional performance, where the heart came before the head, to the point of giving the sound and the execution that touch of humanity, including a few small technical imperfections, which nonetheless managed to convey incredible energy. A magnificent performance.

The Steven Wilson Band's show (because it's only right to consider the enormous contribution of all its members, each coming from hugely significant experiences) is aprog concert through and through. It's prog in the six-hour wait to grab a spot at the front, contested in the first four places by a scant ten people, later growing until they nearly filled the (not enormous) Alcatraz. Prog in the relationship with the fans, people who've known each other for years and meet up at concerts, "newcomers" (like myself) quickly recruited into the group, and off we go with music discussions, exchanges of opinions, all of which made the wait feel almost light. And then, above all, it'sprogin the music, that of "Grace For Drowning" in particular, which, having now heard it, I can guarantee gained in every respect in its live dimension: in cohesion, in brilliance and in sheer impact, first and foremost, plus the obvious advantages that come with it.

So, after the wait between entering the venue and the start of the concert, "enlivened" by the backdrop of field drones taken from some (frankly rather modest) extracts of the latest work by Wilson's side-project Bass Communion, enough to fray the nerves of most of the rock fans present at the show, the band members finally arrive one by one, following a model already tried and tested plenty of times before, each starting to play their own instrument in an intro that, to the ear, sounds like a rather jazzed-up mash-up of sections from "Deadwing", the self-titled Porcupine Tree album. And this will be, for the entire evening, the only nod to the band.

The first to appear is drummer Marco Minnemann, who stands out for a marked penchant for metal-style drumming that will characterise the whole concert, at times becoming perhaps too pronounced. Next comes the now-guru of bass and chapman stick Nick Beggs, oddly more restrained than usual (no leather skirts or S&M boots, no Viking braids), jazz keyboardist Adam Holzman, among others a musical partner of late-'80s Miles Davis, guitarist Niko Tsonev, the band's most recent addition, longtime sessionman Theo Travis, who has among others worked with King Crimson, Jade Warrior and Gong, and finally Wilson. From the moment he appears, the difference in attitude compared to what we're used to is already obvious: he waves his arms, throws himself around the stage, jumps, shouts, urges the crowd on; there's no trace here of the seriousness and rigour of the Porcupine Tree frontman, nothing left of the shyness of that little man with the smooth dark hair and glasses — what we see instead is a free, almost rockstar-like Wilson, switching between vocals, guitar (though the role of lead guitarist is left entirely to the excellent Tsonev) and keyboards.

The show then kicks off with a fired-up crowd and a band in even better form, initially hidden behind a screen onto which some beautiful visuals are projected, but forcefully present from the very start of "No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun", from "Insurgentes", whose long, acidic intro is basically skipped over entirely, going straight to the central section and the doom explosion. Already from this opening, the approach the band chose for the show and for the whole tour is clear: leaning more heavily into the hard side of the songs, perhaps leaving behind a bit of the climactic ebb and flow and the stop 'n' go dynamics. But the formula works brilliantly, coming across as more direct and more engaging both for the audience and for the musicians, especially in the excerpts from "Grace For Drowning". The exploration of the new record begins with the following "Index", whose dark, glossy, almost prog-pop stride in the studio version is here dismantled and turned into a genuine hard-rock segment, helped in particular by Minnemann's metallic drumming, which gives the track a powerful backbone.

The gentle piano intro that opens "Deform To Form A Star" takes on the proportions of a jazz skit thanks to Holzman, but the epic melodic crescendo, at the midpoint of which the screen also "comes down", is here too framed by a much harder edge, quite far removed from the original and still stratospheric in impact. The following two tracks offer two more wonderful moments: first the measured, pulsing hard-prog of "Sectarian", almost like a driving march, its heavy steps accompanied by the stage lighting effects; then the moving and utterly elegant ballad "Postcard", which sends the crowd into raptures and offers a brief moment of calm, with Travis tracing melodic spirals over Holzman's piano and Wilson's heartfelt singing.

The band explodes once again in the leaps of "Remainder The Black Dog", this time steered by the searing solos of Wilson and Tsonev and, once more, by Minnemann's raw drumming; worth noting during the performance are two unplanned moments that drew laughs, with Wilson dropping a plectrum and Minnemann nearly snapping a drumstick while trying to twirl it between his fingers.

The catharsis repeats itself in "Harmony Korine", the first of three tracks drawn from the tracklist of "Insurgentes", performed by Wilson while wearing a gas mask (the same one from the album cover): a track built entirely on crescendo, culminating in a formidable finale not far removed from metal territory, offering the first taste of Minnemann's drumming dominance. This turns positively destructive in "Abandoner", where the strong anticipation for the closing wall of distorted guitars (one of the finest moments on the whole of "Insurgentes") ends up being let down, transformed instead into two minutes of fairly standard noise-metal. In the following title track of "Insurgentes" too, the forced rhythm ends up trampling on the dreamlike, watercolour-like suggestion of the original's voice-and-piano arrangement. The long pastiche of jazz, progressive and experimental touches that make up the unreleased "Luminol" bodes well for the future, hinting that the next album (which the track will be part of) will most likely be an evolution of the "Grace For Drowning" sound toward noisier territory. But the best moment of the entire concert comes with the twenty-three incredible minutes of "Raider II", ideally introduced by the first, brief chapter found on "Insurgentes" simply titled "Raider". The track, performed in full but rich with digressions and expansions, is a blend of every path Wilson has trodden throughout his career: psychedelia, prog, hard-rock, jazz, metal. Interpretable as his own "musical box", live it delivers a truly all-encompassing sensory experience, proving perhaps to be the highest point Wilson has reached in his long and multifaceted career.

The band performs superbly, and the crowd splits between those left spellbound (yours truly included) and those who instead keep moving restlessly for the entire duration of the piece.

The concert could well end here, but the wildly acclaimed band comes back on stage, as is now a moral obligation, to grant the customary encore: the merciless prog-punk of "Get All You Deserve", which lets the audience burn off what little energy they have left: some even attempt to start a "pogo", and come close to succeeding. Before leaving, Minnemann rounds off his night as star of the show by trying out a joke in Italian: nobody has the faintest idea what he means, but the crowd bursts out laughing all the same, perhaps more out of sheer satisfaction at how the concert went than at the joke itself.

There are essentially two conclusions to draw here. The first is the realization that we've just witnessed a wonderful concert, well beyond what could reasonably have been expected, and probably far better than anything Wilson would have delivered with his original band. The second, closely related, is the observation of a musician utterly different from how we remembered him. The impression is that, for good old Steven, the chance to play outside his main project amounts to breaking free from a cage built of expectations, clichés, standards and preconceived ideas: the Wilson we see on "Grace For Drowning" and on this tour is a musician who worries far less about the head and much more about the heart, aware that he can express whatever he wants, indifferent to what fans and critics might expect. And playing that role clearly does him good, does his music good, and does good to everyone lucky enough to catch a performance from his band. All this, of course, without taking anything away from the great band that Porcupine Tree have proven themselves to be, but as things stand, at least live, Wilson beats Porcupine 1-0.

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