{"id":22647,"date":"2022-03-20T05:30:05","date_gmt":"2022-03-20T09:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22647"},"modified":"2022-03-30T13:38:25","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T17:38:25","slug":"march-through-time-porcupine-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/20\/march-through-time-porcupine-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"March Through Time: Porcupine Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Led by Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree is for me the most important musical discovery of the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century. I first heard the group in early 2007, around the time of their ninth album, <i>Fear of a Blank Planet<\/i>. Interviewing Wilson for the first of several times then, I had a lot of catching up to do. I\u2019ve long since acquired the band\u2019s entire catalog, and dug in as well to related projects like IEM, no-man, Bass Communion, Storm Corrosion, Blackfield and of course Wilson\u2019s solo work. The group went inactive in 2010, but I\u2019m pleased to hear that they\u2019re reuniting and have a new album due in June of this year (alas and sadly without bassist Colin Edwin).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-22649\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mtt_porcupine2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"318\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mtt_porcupine2.jpg 1286w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mtt_porcupine2-300x273.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mtt_porcupine2-1024x931.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mtt_porcupine2-768x698.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Porcupine Tree is that rare act \u2013 for me, along with only The Beatles and Pink Floyd \u2013 for which I can recommend every single one of their releases without hesitation. Some are better than others, of course, but there are no weak ones in the lot. So rather than do a rundown of the band\u2019s catalog, I\u2019m instead going to single out ten key tracks.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201c<b>Radioactive Toy\u201d<\/b> (from <i>On the Sunday of Life\u2026<\/i> [1992]) \u2013 A very early track dating from the period in which the \u201cband\u201d was just Steven Wilson, this one has lots of shade and light. It traffics in a bit of neo-psych, but there\u2019s more going on.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>Always Never\u201d<\/b> (from <i>Up the Downstair<\/i> [1993]) \u2013 Wilson shows his command of lyrics in a song that has both romantic-leaning lyrics and a sinewy, corkscrew lead signature melody.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>The Sky Moves Sideways\u201d<\/b> (from <i>The Sky Moves Sideways<\/i> [1995]) \u2013 This two-part suite fills more than half the album, and it is largely responsible for Porcupine Tree\u2019s earned reputation as a sort of Second Coming of Pink Floyd (the Gilmour-esque lead guitar is apretty inescapable connection as well.) Great stuff.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>Every Home is Wired\u201d<\/b> (from <i>Signify<\/i> [1996]) \u2013 Wilson could write a winning pop tune when he put his mind to it, and here he does so while remaining within the space rock\/prog idiom.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>Even Less\u201d<\/b> (from <i>Stupid Dream<\/i> [1999]) \u2013 A majestic tune, easily one of Wilson\u2019s finest compositions. He balances sound and silence, power and subtlety.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>Stranger by the Minute\u201d<\/b> (from <i>Stupid Dream<\/i> [1999]) \u2013 Another indelibly strong pop melody, this track is one of the most user-friendly entry points into Porcupine Tree\u2019s body of work. But there are many.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>Four Chords That Made a Million\u201d<\/b> (from <i>Lightbulb Sun<\/i> [2000]) \u2013 If Steven Wilson had wanted to be a Britpop hero, he could have done it with songs like these. Of course the lyrics take steady aim at that scene; I think it\u2019s about Kula Shaker, but it could\u2019ve been any number of other bands of that era. Or none. Or all.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>The Sound of Muzak\u201d<\/b> (from <i>In Absentia<\/i> [2002]) \u2013 Strong melodies, prog sensibility and a topical lyric about the state of pop music in the new century. What\u2019s not to love?<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>Arriving Somewhere But Not Here\u201d<\/b> (from <i>Deadwing<\/i> [2005]) \u2013 Quite possibly the perfect Porcupine Tree song. An extended work that moves through pop, prog, metal, space rock and other textures.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<b>Time Flies\u201d<\/b> (from <i>The Incident<\/i> [2009]) \u2013 From the band\u2019s last (at least for a long while) studio album, this is technically a portion of a single album-long work. But even though there are some really aggressive, King Crimson-esque passages throughout the album, this is where Wilson\u2019s gift for melody shines brightest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don\u2019t read anything into the lack of selections from <i>Fear of a Blank Planet<\/i> and its related EP <i>Nil Recurring<\/i>. Both are fantastic; it\u2019s just that the above are my top ten at the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Led by Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree is for me the most important musical discovery of the 21st century. I first heard the group in early 2007, around the time of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,65],"tags":[4781,2059],"class_list":["post-22647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-review","tag-porcpine-tree","tag-steven-wilson","cat-27-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22647"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22681,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22647\/revisions\/22681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}