A Prickly Look at the New Porcupine Tree Record
NOTE: Before this review gets under way, I’d just like to say I’m a huge nerd for Steven Wilson, so please take these comments in the context of coming from a fan. Not even going to feign impartiality on this one.
Like Opeth before them, UK proggers Porcupine Tree are the latest in the league of already well-established bands to join the Roadrunner Records roster, and they do so with The Incident, an album that, although it?s bound to get wider exposure than some of their previous releases (Deadwing cries out from the abyss for a deluxe RR reissue that in all likelihood won?t happen) and thus sell better, seems less centrally focused on songwriting and more given to ambient passages and open spaces in the music.
Frontman, guitarist, singer, songwriter and engineer Steven Wilson flirted on Porcupine Tree?s last opus, 2007?s Fear of a Blank Planet, with the idea of one album-length song, resulting in the 17-minute centerpiece cut ?Anesthetize.? On The Incident, he once again takes up the challenge, seeing it through to completion across the disc?s 14 separate tracks as one continuous, sometimes meandering, piece of music. Those who?ve followed Wilson since 2002?s Lava Records breakthrough album, In Absentia will be interested to learn the coalescence that seemed to take place within his songwriting, the contraction of his methodology that led to such landmark cuts as ?Strip the Soul,? ?Shallow? and ?Arriving Somewhere but Not Here,? has once again begun to spread out, and although songs like ?The Yellow Windows of the Evening Train,? ?Degree Zero of Liberty? and ?Occam?s Razor? — as well as several others — hover around two minutes in length, what they offer is breathing room between more substantive movements, like ?The Incident? or ?The Blind House.? How necessary they are in the first place is a matter for listeners to decide on their own, but one might consider them the equivalent experiments to the electronic dissonance that showed itself on last year?s Wilson solo outing, Insurgentes. At least he?s trying something new.
Deadwing had ?Arriving Somewhere but Not Here,? and Fear of a Blank Planet had ?Anesthetize,? and to the end of an epic centerpiece, The Incident has ?Time Flies,? which gathers itself around an insistent acoustic (then electric) guitar line and wanders into atmospherics in the middle, only to come back together in the later moments. What joined the two midpoints of the two previous albums, however, was that at some juncture in them, Porcupine Tree got ridiculously, ridiculously heavy, and while ?Time Flies? hints at it, even teases, it seems to pull back and restrain itself at the last second, resulting in another section of progressive polyrhythms, a tension left unbroken and ultimately a less satisfying listening experience. If Wilson was looking to defy expectations and throw his audience a curve, avoiding the pattern of ?big in the middle? altogether might have been the way to go.
Although Wilson?s genius as a songwriter and producer is well established by 2009, it?s always been somewhat disappointing to read some of Porcupine Tree?s lyrics. Fear of a Blank Planet, based conceptually on Bret Easton Ellis? Lunar Park offered several cringe moments of rudimentary social commentary (MTV = bad, reading and questioning authority = good), and The Incident — which Wilson has said came out of reading a newspaper — is no different. ?Time Flies,? for example, centers on the title line as a chorus, leading one to wonder if the clich? was really all Wilson had to offer lyrically in the song, and if so, why he bothered in the first place. Closer ?I Drive the Hearse? as well reads like depressed teenage poetry, seeking to offer wisdom in the mundane and missing the mark. Of course, as Wilson begs ?Give me something new, please? in a high register in ?Octane Twisted,? it?s a line the simplicity of which is a big part of what makes it so memorable. So, like anything, it?s a tradeoff.
And true enough, that tradeoff is nothing new in the world of Porcupine Tree, but if The Incident is a test for how large a grain of salt your audience is willing to swallow to get through it, it can?t possibly be serving the intended purpose of the record. The included second disc EP with tracks ?Flicker,? ?Bonnie the Cat,? ?Black Dahlia? and ?Remember Me Lover? feels like parts that just couldn?t be fit into the larger full-length work, and though there are Wilson cultists who swear by his every note and three-part harmony (and for good reason), The Incident feels simultaneously overdone and under-composed. There are moments of shining brilliance, but like the heavy build-ups, they?re not capitalized on and the record feels lost in its own progressiveness. Whether it was rushed or sat on for too long, I don?t know, but it lacks the immediacy of Wilson?s best work, despite being melodically and structurally effective.
The bottom line? Not a good place to start. In Absentia is a suitable launch point for new listeners. If you?re already into the band, chances are you?re going to buy The Incident regardless of what the reviews say, so dig it as you will.
Tags: Porcupine Tree, Roadrunner, UK
