Steven Wilson - A Rock Self-Portrait (and Other Stories)

To be or to be like?

The thin line between persona and identity, the problematic relationship between creative vein and stylistic trademark, is an old story in the world of rock, one of those that has always fueled debate both passionate and sterile. Something that often plays out in places entirely foreign to the artist, such as being used by a critic as one of the chief arguments in judging a work (the classic "they sound too much like themselves").

But on rarer occasions, beyond the disputes among insiders and the arguments among fanbases, one has reason to believe that the problem also presents itself, in nobler and more intimate forms, to the artists themselves. Or at least to those among them whose creative arc maintains a strong, variably perceptible bond with autobiographical events, emotional journeys, fantasies, desires, and whatever else belongs to the most intimate spheres of their personality.

What is the boundary between having a "personal and unmistakable" style and playing in a "certain way", perhaps all too repetitively? And what room can creativity find, within a formula settled over time, if understood as expressive "drive"? How can one explore new territory while consistently keeping the same clothes on? And finally, how much of that outfit is truly the fruit of one's own creative impulses, and how much is the product of other factors - first among them the desire to "cultivate" an audience, not to disappoint its expectations, to indulge its wishes?

It can also happen that such questions lead to problematic answers, to decisive moments of self-awareness, revealing that even one's favourite clothes can sometimes feel constricting, and sparking the need to return to a nakedness that was once almost fought against, rejected, extinguished. A need that, metaphor aside, can lead to drastic choices aimed at rediscovering the purest relationship with one's own creative sphere, giving up form and stylistic coherence to rediscover a substance that had been hidden, perhaps even silenced, for too long. Sometimes this happens almost unconsciously, fuelled by a powerful enthusiasm, the kind that can spring from the unexpected, overwhelming success of something born almost as a lark. A narrative arc of this kind is the one running through the recent history of Steven Wilson.

In an interview given to the Guardian on the occasion of the release of Hand. Cannot. Erase (2015), the chief standard-bearer of the Nineties psych-prog revival explained: "Lately I'd felt uncomfortable within Porcupine Tree. I felt like I'd become a slave to that sound. I wasn't thinking about arranging a song the way I actually wanted to, but about doing it in a way fans would recognise, so they could say 'yes, that's a Porcupine Tree song!'. I felt, and still feel, the need to dedicate myself to myself, to escape that stereotype. I don't know if it will be forever, but that's how it is for now".

However unexpected the suspension of a musical adventure lasting over twenty years – that of his mother band – may have seemed, the split between Wilson and (his) Porcupine Tree was anything but a sudden event, nor one that's hard to understand in terms of how it developed. Outside the circle of diehard fans – connoisseurs, we might even say – the last studio album ("The Incident", 2009) had been received as the first sign of waning inspiration, no longer capable of a shift on the scale of, say, "In Absentia"'s turn towards metal sounds. And the preceding "Deadwing" and "Fear Of A Blank Planet" can today be considered the most emblematic, "summarising" products of the band's entire trajectory. These were the end points of a search that began as a Floydian revival by a one-man band disguised as a rock quartet, and which, once a genuine band had been formed with internationally renowned players (Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison, sacred monsters reinvented ad hoc within the little orchestra conducted by Wilson), passed through a multitude of phases and just as many pivotal records – from the unsurpassed "Signify" to the essential "Stupid Dream", right up to the new-millennium works already mentioned. If one wanted to read into it imaginatively, one could even point out how "Sleep Together", the tormented, dark epilogue of "Fear Of A Blank Planet", sounded like a perfect possible epitaph, an almost funereal final celebration marking the end of a journey, as well as an anticipation of a desperate need to escape, to reconcile creativity with identity. This means out/ This is your way out/ Do or drown/ Do or drown in torpor/ Leave no trace/ All my files erased/ Burn my clothes/ Burn my Prada trainers/ This is fate/ This is your escape/ Leave here now/ Leave here, now it’s over.

For the historic English band, the tour that followed the double album "The Incident", documented more or less fragmentarily on the live release "Octane Twisted" (to date the band's last official release), thus effectively served as a final act. No official announcement was made regarding the hiatus, but whenever asked about it, Wilson has forcefully reiterated what's quoted above, adding (more or less brusquely) that at present there's no viable path forward with the band and that, with a conscious dose of selfishness, his current interest is entirely devoted to his solo career as a songwriter. It's an adventure through which he has brought together under a single name (this time his own, no longer that of a project, further evidence of a deep need for personal "reaffirmation") the various stylistic strands he developed over twenty years alongside the main Porcupine Tree line – from the prog-pop and exotic flourishes of Blackfield and No-Man to the cosmic leanings of I.E.M. (Incredible Expanding Mindfuck), through to the sprawling, contorted ambient-drone and bass music released as Bass Communion. Irrefutable proof of this lies in the simple fact that, from 2009 to today, even as these other projects have almost entirely ceased – with the exception of Blackfield, now solely in the hands of Aviv Geffen – no fewer than seven studio albums have appeared, including one covers album and one "transitional" record, accompanied by increasingly frequent and extensive world tours.

To describe this new chapter of Wilson's career as a headlong flight from his past would, however, simply distort the actual facts. A wide-ranging look at the path traced over nearly ten years of his eponymous activity reveals, paradoxically, a remarkably "continuous" sonic landscape. It's a path that eventually led to a more or less complete escape from his prog-rock origins on the most recent To The Bone (2017), but one that passed through a wide range of shades along the way, at times in total continuity with the sounds typically associated with the Porcupine Tree name. What's radically different, from the very first Insurgentes onward, are in fact a few fundamental details: the far more committed, autobiographical tone of the lyrics, the abandonment of any need for internal stylistic coherence within each album, the more immediate style of the songs, and a tendency to embrace, if not outright celebrate, a certain theatrical flamboyance. More than in the arrangements or the sound in a broad sense, it's in the rejection of self-limitation and the embrace of compositional and authorial spontaneity that the real meaning of the turn Wilson has taken in his solo career lies. A turn that favours an unfiltered narration of the self at the expense of any remaining sense of reference – to a brand, to an audience, to a single, predetermined idea of style. A turn that is, ultimately, strictly "autobiographical" in nature.

Beyond any doubt, yet in hindsight anything but surprising, the solo debut actually arrives while Porcupine Tree was still active, in the period immediately following "Fear Of A Blank Planet". The first offspring of this new path, Insurgentes, was born in November 2008, first released through Headphone Dust before being reissued by Kscope in February 2009, and in some ways represents the "different", unruly twin of the almost contemporaneous record released with the band. While sharing entirely the same existentialist poetics and generally dark hues – and therefore clearly connected – the two records diverge radically in atmosphere and development. Where "Fear Of A Blank Planet" was measured, balanced down to the millimetre and "classic" – to the point of perhaps being the record that best embodies the Porcupine Tree universe in its full breadth – Insurgentes is a chaotic, "gut-level" record, oozing an expressive urgency with no filter and no self-control whatsoever.

The album picks up a good deal of the post-prog tendencies of late Porcupine Tree, as well as numerous variations on themes drawn from the band's material or from outtakes of earlier albums, but recasts them within a framework drawn mainly from the sounds of new wave and Eighties post-punk, from Joy Division to the Cure – influences that in some ways already foreshadow the many musical directions Wilson would go on to explore. The line-up, too, is largely drawn from the progressive-rock world: alongside the drumming of longtime collaborator Gavin Harrison, there are several notable guests, including King Crimson bassist Tony Levin and Jordan Rudess, keyboardist of Dream Theater, the versatile wind player Theo Travis (featured on two tracks on "Stupid Dream" and on the outtakes collection "Recordings") and, in a brief cameo, Irish vocalist Clodagh Simonds (who worked with Mike Oldfield on "Hergest Ridge" and "Ommadawn").

With Insurgentes another defining, distinctive trait of Wilson's solo career also emerges: the drive to create powerful, vividly imaginative audiovisual narratives, increasingly close to the conventions of contemporary cinema. The lead single makes this clear: borrowing the name of controversial American director Harmony Korine is a surrealist gesture every bit as pointed as Korine's own grotesque attacks on the decay of Western civilisation; the lyrics, as with others on the album, bear no direct correlation with the title and don't slavishly follow a logical thread, but instead experiment with spontaneous juxtapositions of words and phrases that merge and blur within the musical fabric, detached from their usual semantic value (Feel, no shame, too brave/ Feel, afraid, to wait forever). Another aspect emerging here for the first time is an interest in dissonance and noise-derived elements, which Wilson now feels free to experiment with, drawing inspiration from the nightmarish atmospheres conjured by early David Lynch, a visionary master of sound design as much as of cinema proper.

The eclecticism of the tracks gathered on Insurgentes betrays, alongside the already-mentioned impatience to escape the band's constricting conventions, an understandable and resulting moment of indecision about which path to take. The album thus takes shape as a repository of ideas either sketched out or long set aside, brought back with a surprising emotional weight, even if lacking any organic connection. "Veneno Para Las Hadas" even opens with a direct quote of the diaphanous guitar that launched the suite "The Sky Moves Sideways", building around it an unshakeably calm setting; from the harshness of "In Absentia", meanwhile, comes a long, slow-building instrumental ("No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun") and, as a kind of interlude, its hushed acoustic counterpart "Twilight Coda". Still, there are glimpses of the intimate songwriting occasionally found among the historic band's finest pages, from "Signify" to "Lightbulb Sun": the melancholic, fatalistic "Get All You Deserve" anticipates the intense closing of the title track, for solo piano and voice (Now, out of death, you speak in tongues/ And, out of breath, your work is done/ And your dream absolves/ And your past dissolves).

It's only once Porcupine Tree's studio and live activity had been put on hold that the second and more ambitious double album, Grace For Drowning, makes its appearance. This is the record that formally kicks off Wilson's "solo career", establishing him once and for all as a rock author in his own right. On a purely musical level, this is achieved through a process of filtering, selecting and refining some of the most fruitful ideas that had emerged on Insurgentes: the return to the forefront of the bass, heavily sidelined on the band's later records, a pull towards dark, acidic settings, and a more "classic", less intrusive use of synths.

Building on these elements, the album reveals some of the factors that would go on to become cornerstones of Wilson's authorial approach from here on: ever-increasing complexity of the arrangements, a broader gaze cast directly towards classic Seventies prog-rock, and a narrative construction linking autobiographical imagery with metaphors drawn from anecdotes, news stories and everyday life, all gathered within the form of the "concept album".

In this sense, the title draws on accounts given by ordinary people who have had near-death experiences: those who narrowly escaped drowning describe how, after an initial phase of agitation and panic, a sense of calm sets in, a peaceful surrender that precedes the cessation of breath. It's a metaphor Wilson uses to express his growing sense of liberation in being able to do whatever he likes or feels curious about without worrying about others' judgement, after years of performance anxiety spent proving his musicianship to the world. Having been a product of a chaotic need for "creative release" on the previous record, flamboyance here becomes a genuine stylistic key, a precise, deliberate choice made in service of the musical narrative. Having burned through the spontaneous fervour that had fuelled the previous record, and having taken control of his own creative impulses, Wilson seems for the first time to "put to use", in a functional and highly deliberate way, both lyrics and compositions in service of creative momentum, opening his sonic universe to as broad a view as possible of the Seventies landscape as a whole. The line-up again features Rudess and Travis, with Trey Gunn and Nick Beggs alternating with Tony Levin on bass, while on drums we find Nic France and Pat Mastelotto (of King Crimson, from "Thrak" onward).

The stylistic shift is immediately apparent, and it's in particular the multifaceted revolution of King Crimson that serves as the primary source of inspiration, from the electric rawness of "Larks' Tongues In Aspic" and "Red" to the taste for baroque ornamentation of "Lizard", a touchstone directly referenced in the suite "Raider II", a majestic compendium placed just before the album's finale.

The direct consequence of this ever-present point of reference – the eclectic figure of deus ex machina Robert Fripp – is the ability to handle complex, multiform compositions organically without ever losing sight of the more romantic side of that mythology. Moog synthesizers and mellotron, choirs and orchestral sections envelop both the most lyrical passages ("Deform To Form A Star", "Postcard") and the most instrumentally furious ones ("Sectarian"): within the space of ten minutes, "Remainder The Black Dog" packs in a wealth of embellishments and stylistic detours – from symphonic prog to jazz-fusion to avant-metal – that anyone else would have handled in a disjointed, muddled way, whereas Wilson juxtaposes each idea in a tight, "cinematic" dialogue within its whirling, para-narrative development.

If Grace For Drowning marks the transition from a vision in shades of grey to a full-colour scenario, the follow-up The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories) constitutes a genuine journey backward in time, almost a timeless "parenthesis" set apart from the evolutionary path later traced by Wilson's solo career. It's an episode that shares with its predecessors a radical notion of creative freedom, though here the autobiographical metaphor shifts from first-person prose narration to a fairy-tale tribute to his own "ideal world". A true restoration project rooted in the Seventies, this time pointing unmistakably towards the classic sound of Genesis, Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the album represents the fullest realisation of the "nostalgia factory" that Wilson's entire career as a musician has in many ways embodied. It's easy to trace the decisive contribution to this shift back to his encounter with the ever-enduring Steve Hackett, with whom Wilson shared the stage on several dates of the "Genesis Revisited Tour" (2010), and whose choral, vaguely ethnic sounds echo through more than one passage on the record.

Through this direct testimony and a careful, detailed study, Wilson immerses himself in the sounds that musically raised him, drawing on them with mastery and without hesitation, keeping his distance from any forced attempt at "re-interpretation" or modernisation, and instead giving renewed vigour and fresh lifeblood to timbral, sonic and musical motifs that belong to rock history. All of this is achieved through the recovery of vintage instruments (Mellotron, Farfisa, various modular and analogue synthesizers) and a careful, analytical study of prog's compositional techniques and narrative devices. Staying with the film parallel, it could be compared to what Martin Scorsese set out to evoke with "Hugo Cabret", reviving the archaic charm of Georges Méliès's films, a forerunner of special effects to come; in the artwork illustrated by Hajo Mueller, co-author of some of the episodes, its century-old anthropomorphic moon takes on the expression of Edvard Munch's The Scream while, perhaps, also winking at the cover of King Crimson's "schizoid man".

"Luminol" serves as a long prologue devoted to passing time, to the wrinkles etched on the faces of music's old glories (He strums the chords with less than grace/ Each passing year etched on his face/ The words he sings are not his own/ They speak of things he'll never know), bringing to mind the "exotic classicism" of "Close To The Edge", with its Hammond and tempo changes, choral openings and plays of fullness and emptiness, outbursts and knowing winks. The sweeter, more carefree "Drive Home", almost a "second act" to "Postcard", heads instead towards the Genesis of "A Trick Of The Tail", while "The Pin Drop" seeks and finds a rollercoaster effect, its choral quality underlining the band's incredible chemistry.

Among the record's high points is "The Watchmaker", an entirely instrumental ride that opens with guitar arpeggios before exploding into a unison of voice, electric guitar, rhythm and keyboards, passing midway through a piano solo in odd time. The more measured finale, entrusted to the title track — perhaps the most intimate piece on the whole album — leads us by the hand to the exit door of an enchanted world, bringing to a close a journey through time conducted with compositional mastery and superb command of instruments that are historically difficult to handle expressively.

The following release gives an account of a passion nurtured over the years, alongside his more imposing projects, and dispensed in small doses across six single CDs from 2003 to 2010, each containing one unreleased track and one cover. The songs collected in Cover Version are not mere exercises in impersonation: with them, Wilson summons artists past and present, famous and obscure, asking their permission to momentarily appropriate their creations and reinvent them in his own image. There's no crisis of inspiration here, just the free pursuit of emotions to replicate and claim as his own, through a direct correspondence between artistic sensibilities. This is the sense and the reason why this collection fits so fully into Wilson's solo output: it's a new way of baring himself, one that seems to tell us — like the bare pencil sketch on the cover depicting him — "This too is me".

And it's surprising — as it must have been for him in the first place — just how particular the names called upon are: there's a pleasure as subtle as it is unique in discovering oneself in tune with a hit as sui generis as Alanis Morissette's "Thank U" ("How 'bout changing a line 'cause it don't make sense?", the only tweak made to the original lyrics); or in digging up a melancholy urban sketch by ABBA, perfectly adapted for Wilson's acoustic guitar, as he chooses in these reinterpretations to play it down and focus on his delicate, nasal voice. Only Prince's signature song, "Sign 'O' The Times", offers the right occasion for a hard-rock jolt in the style of post-2000 Porcupine Tree.

Brief moments of intimacy recall past gems such as "How Is Your Life Today?", where the frontman's songwriting streak was already crystal clear. The (former) unreleased tracks included here don't betray the path taken in recent years either: music that by now fully reveals its progressive/psychedelic roots — above all the muted hint of Frippian guitar on "Please Come Home". Also worth noting are "The Unquiet Grave", a traditional wrapped in gentle delayed vocal overdubs, and the romantic "Well You're Wrong", set to a lullaby rhythm, with a soft little keyboard carpet and a few touches of piano colour. The ambient close of "An End To End" seals this diary of simple feelings, which gets straight to the essence of what Steven Wilson represents today as an independent musician.

If we weren't talking about an artist with thirty-five years of career behind him, we wouldn't hesitate to call Hand. Cannot. Erase. his mature-years album. This is clearly not for lack of previous displays of skill, but because of Wilson's now fully achieved and evident ability to blend every facet of his multifaceted output into an exceptionally emotional and intimate narrative. In fact, this is the first album that fully defines him as a rock songwriter.

A tragic (and, in its own way, poetic) news story, already told in a 2011 documentary, guides him back to reality and the present day: it's the case of Joyce Vincent, found dead in her London flat more than two years after going missing, during which time nobody had noticed her absence. Deep compassion drives Wilson's efforts to put himself in various female perspectives, in a handing-over between past and present that takes shape in "3 Years Older", the last tribute to Genesis before their twilight years, introduced in "First Regret" by a bed of piano and hazy electronics. The arrival of the creative morning is in some ways startling: it's ushered in by the title track, a syncopated pop song in which British roots emerge powerfully — and it's no coincidence that here we find one of several solos reminiscent of Andrew Latimer's Camel. Just a few words are enough to celebrate the endurance of a genuine bond that, amid guilt and mutual loneliness, still doesn't buckle under the weight of the years.

Time, its inertia and the individual's powerlessness against it: this, ultimately, is the theme that, in various lyrical and musical guises, insistently surfaces throughout Hand. Cannot. Erase.. The placebo of habit is cast as the main culprit, yet at the same time an uneasy (and false) ally, in the long analysis of "Routine" (Routine keeps me in line/ Helps me pass the time/ Concentrate my mind/ Helps me to sleep), amid a thousand changes of scenery whose common thread lies in a hybrid prog transfiguration worthy of Steve Hackett. In the whirl of images and sounds steeped in trip-hop on "Perfect Life", it's Joyce herself who recounts details of her story, through the narrative voice of Jennifer Begley.

Through all of this, the freedom to follow one's own streams of consciousness and musical memory remains intact: the prog matrix survives in the spirit and the backbone of the whole, but the individual sequences touch on a far wider range of influences and shades. Credit is also due to the band — the same one from "The Raven…", very much confirmed here even in a totally different context. Clear echoes thus take shape in the album's central section: the first recalling the fury of Insurgentes, evoked with class on "Home Invasion", the second recalling the psychedelic era, in the spectacular Moog solo of "Regret #9". Others are scattered through the nearly quarter-hour of "Ancestral", from the martial atmosphere of the opening minutes to the repeated outbursts of the second half, complete with a sweeping guitar solo.

The quietly autobiographical nature of the lyrics, hidden behind narrative metaphor, reveals its full scope on "Transience": a fittingly brief episode, the instant that slips through the hands of a young Wilson ("It's only the start", he repeats incessantly), travelling along train tracks and the paths of a melancholy folk sound, to be counted among the most intimate fragments he has ever written. The peak of this is reached in the harrowing pre-finale of "Happy Returns", a letter to his brother about the divisions that time and personal circumstances create between loved ones (Hey brother, I'd love to tell you I've been busy/ but that would be a lie/ 'cos the truth is the years just pass like trains/ I wave but they don't slow down).

We are truly witnessing the curtain fall on an entire chapter of Wilson's career, that of bands and countless hybrid projects: an era that perhaps closes for good to make way for his definitive consecration as a musician, songwriter and, before anything else, as an artist and a man, (finally) free to let his own voice be heard.

The sound of pure nostalgia, in both the instrumentation and the mood of the lyrics, continues to be the element that unmistakably betrays the "fourth-and-a-half album"'s connection to the heartfelt sessions of Hand. Cannot. Erase.: but 4 ½, unfortunately, mostly gathers a few orphaned instrumentals or, in a couple of cases, plain songs lacking ambition.

From the theme of regret, the main key to understanding the recent album, Wilson sketches out the structure of "My Book Of Regrets", which remains the most fully realised episode of this appendix: it almost seems like a prologue to the tragedy of the girl who died in her own apartment (Under neon lights she walks home/ Back to her apartment, oh a safe way/ Harbored when she locks the door she could slip away); and in an almost overt way, though perhaps unconsciously, the second riff on acoustic guitar echoes that of "Time Flies", which sealed the swan song under the name Porcupine Tree, and which drapes the track in that melancholy that is the eternal companion of adulthood. Along the same lines, in the instrumental "Year Of The Plague", the watercolour hues of Hackett-esque arpeggios return, this time cloaked in the throb of a violin.

Then comes the insipid "Happiness 3", with its square, unvarying rhythms: not that simplicity is a flaw in itself — far from it, given the results shown so far in his solo career — but when it's paired with thin melodic inspiration, it becomes hard to tell you're listening to anything truly new. Nor does the second instrumental, "Sunday Rain Sets In", do anything to dispel the patchwork effect: its intro suggests a kind of dark-jazz ballad in the vicinity of "Twin Peaks", before resolving once again into a wistful, Crimson-esque interlude.

For a proper jolt, you have to wait for “Vermillioncore”, which – Hammond organ aside – is a pure revival of the transitional phase between “Stupid Dream” and “In Absentia” towards the metal contagion (specifically, the blueprint seems to be the same as “Wedding Nails”).

With that, we finally arrive at “Don’t Hate Me”: a superfluous revisitation, since one can't really call it an update, given the persistent retro character surrounding 4 ½ as a whole – with the superfluous vocal addition of Israeli muse Ninet Tayeb, whose squeaks are simply irritating; in the middle there's even a round of solos between keyboards and an occasional sax over a haughty bassline, before the deceleration leading into the final reprise.

This premature return to record shelves isn't entirely negligible, but in weighing up Wilson's fourth and fifth opus, perhaps there just wasn't room for a “half album”, which for the first time adds no value to his body of work.

I’m tired of Facebook/ Tired of my failing health/ I’m tired of everyone/ And that includes myself.

Even after several listens to To The Bone, it's this passage from lead single “Pariah” that lingers in the mind more than any other. Not just because it directly references a device that is, to some extent, eroding everyone's lives and relationships, but because it reveals a frustration that already seems to unite many artists of today: being forced into uninterrupted media exposure, feeding the ravenous, bored eye of an audience that has developed a new addiction to entertainment, one that has leapt from the cathode-ray tube to devices from which, in fact, we cannot separate ourselves.

We are tired, bored, sickened by people and their hypertrophic “ego”: it's not hard to imagine that a musician, whether emerging or seasoned, sooner or later has to come to terms with a distorted image of themselves, an identity trap they'd like to escape before succumbing to it. It's a viewpoint the average listener seems to struggle to grasp, unwilling to accept that an artist might take paths diverging from one standard or another: so, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the unveiling of every new preview of To The Bone came a string of ironic, sometimes even offensive comments about Wilson's new stylistic leanings, which also include falsetto vocals and decidedly buoyant pop rhythms.

Before long, comparisons were flying with the Genesis transition from the Peter Gabriel era to the (much-maligned by many) Phil Collins one: it should be remembered, though, that for nearly all the historic progressive bands, the move into pop territory was not only a necessary “historic compromise” for survival, but also a sign of changing times reshaping the public's listening habits and sonic preferences. For the former Porcupine Tree leader, adopting those stylistic devices is, yes, a response to a need for change that is in some ways disorienting, but it is above all yet another shade of that nostalgia which has guided and inspired every phase of his career, as a frontman and even more so as a solo artist – not least, too, in his role as “restorer” of the catalogues of King Crimson, Yes, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant and other legends.

Every aspect of Wilson's artistic activity confirms his standing as a cultured music obsessive who, over the years, has never settled into his own comfort zone: he himself recalls the criticism levelled at the metal turn of “In Absentia” – today one of the defining albums of the 2000s – and goes into the tour, where he will present songs that might only seem, at first glance, somewhat outside his usual range, with full awareness of what he's doing.

If today the cover features a portrait of Steven rather than a strikingly imaginative subject, it's probably because the album's content itself shifts the focal point from narrative (or epos, in the pompously vintage taste of The Raven) to clear-eyed self-analysis, to an attempt to “lay bare” an even more personal feeling and convey a fresh outlook on the present.

Even just five years earlier, a track like “Permanating” would have been unthinkable within Wilson's repertoire, and that's precisely why it arrives as such a refreshing gust of air, breaking decisively from the deeply melancholic vein that has always defined the songwriting of this figurehead of English rock. A similar sense of liberation and lightness surrounds the chorus of “Nowhere Now”, a track that, with words normally suited to a radio hit, evokes nothing less than a carefree soaring among the clouds (Here above the clouds/ I am free of all the crowds/ And I float above the stars/ And I feel the rush of love).

We're in total and evident contrast with the invocation of the track mentioned above, where the main subject is emphatically addressed by muse Ninet Tayeb as a pariah, that is, the lowest of the low in the social pyramid. Further on, more shadows loom: “People Who Eat Darkness” voices the worry of becoming strangers even at close range, shut away in our lives, so similar yet so sharply divided (Pretend that we’re not here/ If you look the other way we disappear/ We want you to ignore/ The people who eat darkness from next door); in the lengthy “Detonation”, digital percussion introduces the impersonation of a terrorist addressing his silent god, whose cruel messenger he makes himself before carrying out the murderous act (And the ones who are given it all/ The good looks, the wealth/ And the charm and the innocence/ They are all gonna fall/ But I will take it back).

A great many elements, ultimately, bring to mind precisely Peter Gabriel's 1980s output, from the engaged lyrics and the variety of registers lined up across the tracklist to the arrangement choices, right down to the vivid colours of the cover art, mirroring those of “Us”. And if the sly, obsessive tread of “Song Of I” has the sinister allure of an “Intruder”, isn't the heartfelt dedication of “Refuge” to refugees from third-world wars his own personal “San Jacinto”? (And if you ask me again/ Is this life?/ I don’t see I have a choice/ But I still smile/ And bide my time.)

There's equally room for moments where Wilson's melodic signature is absolutely unmistakable, from the mocking alt-rock of “The Same Asylum As Before” to the acoustic interlude “Blank Tapes”, right up to the final ethereal invocation of “Song Of Unborn”, a pure late-90s Porcupine Tree revival, a helping hand offered in comfort to anyone being tested by a life and a society that cannot cope with change (Now the shadows are long/ And the cities are lost terrain/ When you wake up every day/ To find nothing’s changed).

More than in the actual songwriting, then, this can be called Wilson's “pop” album in that he finally allowed himself free rein, for better or worse, taking another step outside the cult of the concept album. Not everyone will manage to accept that To The Bone is simply a free-standing collection of songs which, rather than exclusively feeding the memory of a glorious past, speak to us of an artist who lives less and less off that past, drawing on it only insofar as it can assist him in his search for a new voice, that is, in his never-dormant artistic growth.

Announced by the single “Personal Shopper” in March 2020, pushed back to June 12th of that same year, then postponed again to 2021, The Future Bites shows how Wilson hasn't just learned to swim in the technological orgy of modern synths, but knows how to master them, using them as a narrative tool for contemporary society. And if in To The Bone the object of scorn was Facebook, in The Future Bites it's consumerist fever that underpins the English musician's clever provocations in song form. Once again Wilson climbs aboard the bandwagon of dismay, pointing the finger unreservedly at the enemy (consumerism) while at the same time mockingly confusing the devoted listener, inviting them to buy any artifact bearing the album's title.

The Future Bites isn't just a brilliant provocation, but also a record rich in forward-looking perspectives (it's one of the first albums mixed in Dolby Atmos Surround). Wilson moves through song structure with an ease that is already art in itself. The captivating “Man Of The People” takes soul by the hand and dresses it in Pink Floyd-esque textures, flooding one of the set's most political lyrics with beauty and indulgence, while the restrained melancholy of “12 Things I Forgot” reveals an admiration for that strenuous pop poetics which 10cc, E.L.O. and Elton John made noble. And it's a welcome creative convergence to find the aforementioned Elton John as the unwitting protagonist of the album's electronic, dance-leaning outburst, namely the nearly ten minutes of “Personal Shopper”. It falls to the king of pop, in fact, to reel off the long list of products subject to the frenzied consumerism that is the track's central theme (the video is exceedingly unsettling), while underneath runs an ecstatic disco-rock sound that in its own way inherits the driving nature of “Relax” and the visionary spirit of Giorgio Moroder.

An album that confirms Wilson's knack for never repeating himself: indeed, none of the works put out so far by the musician from Hertfordshire has ever been conceived as a deeper dive into a previous chapter of his discography. This latest effort is no exception: although it hints for a minute ("Unself") at a lyrical indulgence toward the past, it immediately slices through that mood with the ingenious, destabilizing trip-hop/dance/r&b/rock of "Self", which in under three minutes lays the groundwork for the album's development, veering slightly into the excellent, almost surreal electro-funk of "King Ghost", where everything is subservient to the glories of electronics, voice included, before striking at the heart of the mainstream with a heavy, abrasive funk-rock-gospel ("Eminent Sleaze") that carries the same apocalyptic intensity as "Another Brick In The Wall".

The nine tracks aren't moral reflections, but original and well-informed vantage points. What lives here is more the spirit of David Bowie's Berlin era or the rhythmic fever of Peter Gabriel's album "IV" than the languor of Camel's "Moonmadness" or Genesis's "Selling England By The Pound".

There's no point getting tangled up in discussions about the clinical tone of the pop-wave of "Follower" (Bowie meets Sparks) or the more caressing communicativeness of "Count Of Unease" (the inevitable nod to the diehard fans): there isn't a second, or fraction of a second, in these nine songs that doesn't have its own reason for being. Time, that great gentleman, will do justice to yet another masterstroke from the English musician.

Following the 2022 Porcupine Tree reunion for the release of "Closure/Continuation", in 2023 Wilson returns to add further lustre to his solo career, releasing a new work, the most varied in his discography, titled The Harmony Codex.

It should be said that his artistic approach has always involved, especially in his solo work, an almost obsessive drive to avoid repeating the same structural blueprint, at times surprising even his most seasoned listeners. Here too the goal seems to have been achieved: progressive rock, pop, psychedelia, touches of jazz and plenty of electronics are the tasty ingredients of this intricate bill of fare.

The lengthy suites "Inclination", "Impossible Tightrope" and "Staircase" showcase the agility and abundance of Steven Wilson's ideas, as he seeks, in these tracks, to continually shift between sonic settings, convincingly proposing combinations that on paper seem ill-suited to coexist, such as strings and ambient electronics, or saxophone and post-industrial leanings. The patterns that tickle "Economies Of Scale" trace a decidedly innovative stylistic path for the British musician, aiming to offer prog-jazz fragrances that settle into a hypothetical zone occupied by Massive Attack and Radiohead.

There's no shortage of more immediate solutions either, as has been the case for at least a couple of his albums now. "What Life Brings" and especially "Rock Bottom" reach out toward the pop world while retaining a high degree of intensity and quality. In the latter of the two tracks mentioned, it's the duet with Israeli artist Ninet Tayeb (who wrote the piece) that carves out one of the essential spaces of the entire record. Theirs is a well-established relationship, one that had already earned praise back in the days of To The Bone, perhaps the closest to pop that Wilson has ever released.

On this occasion Tayeb's expressive power collides perfectly with the very Floydian harmonies devised by Wilson, over lyrics dealing with the difficulty of facing a relationship crisis on the verge of breaking down, yet one that tries by every means to hold itself together (the video is certainly evocative).

The Harmony Codex, as mentioned at the outset, is a multifaceted record, probably not the absolute best in Steven Wilson's solo output, but one that, over time, wouldn't be surprising to see climb the ranks of a hypothetical ranking all the way to an elite position.

Recorded, as always, flawlessly, and best listened to, if possible, with suitable equipment to savour every hidden detail, the album confirms that we're in the presence of a complete artist of great depth, on a solo path launched toward absolute freedom of action, a situation that can't necessarily occur within Porcupine Tree.

Yet another concept album, the following The Overview (2025) marks the English musician's return to progressive rock with two suites that fill the sides of the record, both conceived as the soundtrack to a visual-art installation that narrates the emotions of an astronaut as he observes an Earth now far away, an almost philosophical paradigm about the diminishing of the human figure when set against nature. The project, coordinated with the organization Space Rocks, is also supported by a 42-minute video, and boasts one of the British artist's most complex and complete compositions, "Object Outlive Us", a track split into eight movements spanning over sixty years of rock languages — from prog to pop, from new wave to hard rock, from drone music to post-rock — with lyrics by Andy Partridge of Xtc as the icing on the cake.

The narrative demands are a source of both delight and torment: the eight chapters of "Object Outlive Us" are rich with ideas, from the goth-prog choirs that open the suite, to the "Bohemian Rhapsody"-style choral passage that kicks things off by introducing one of its standout moments ("Objects: Meanwhile"), where the powerful images of everyday life crafted by Andy Partridge's skilled hand flow by. The rest of the first suite is a succession of hard-rock surges, Pink Floyd-esque echoes and post-rock flashes that don't shy away from electronics and drone music; the effect is a brilliant mix of Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick" and Pink Floyd's "Animals". 

Wilson shows even greater confidence and daring on the title track, further broadening the scope and pulling off an intriguing reverse excursion, starting from Warp-style electronic atmospheres that flow into a passage closest to Porcupine Tree's most successful prog efforts, before rewinding the tape of possible references to throw cosmic-country hallucinations and metal subtleties into the bizarre cauldron, tying together all the threads of a story whose protagonists are man and space, with inevitable nods to "The Dark Side Of The Moon".

Unfortunately the music is at times too subservient to its visual counterpart, the harmonic fabric occasionally frayed, perpetually balanced between aesthetic elegance and predictability. What Steven Wilson's new album doesn't lack is intelligence and imagination, along with a touch of recklessness, an element that, here too, helps keep the listener's attention firmly fixed.

Contributions by Gianfranco Marmoro ("The Future Bites", "The Overview"), Cristiano Orlando ("The Harmony Codex")

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google