Disco de Porcupine Tree: “Deadwing”

I'm closing in on 50 years of age. Way back in the late sixties and the early seventies I was constantly bombarded with music that was inventive and always good. It was a high point in the history of rock, and from what I had been able to hear since then I assumed I would never hear anything that good again. Sure there were some good things coming out now and then, but nothing compared to those old bands and so I resigned myself to what I thought was the fact that the greatest that rock music had to offer was in the past. In fact I have to admit I was starting to grow a little bored with the whole rock and roll scene recently. And then just two weeks ago I heard Porcupine Tree for the first time. I couldn't believe my ears! Here was a band that created not just good music, but great music! I heard Deadwing and immediately went out and started buying their records. I bought Up the Downstair and In Absentia along with Deadwing, and I loved it all. The next day I sought out more. I found Signify and Stupid Dream and ordered copies of Coma Divine, On the Sunday of Life and The Sky Moves Sideways. All of those arrived within a week and during that week I downloaded the unreleased and live music available from their online shop. In short I've become a Porcupine Tree addict! And what luck: they have a new album coming out later this month! I went to a rather well known download store and bought the Blackfield 2 release mainly because it includes the title track from the forthcoming album, but I'm also really enjoying the Blackfield record as well. Needless to say I've spent a lot of money on their music in a very short period of time, and every single dime was well spent. According to the insert information in the repackaged versions of Signify and Coma Divine, both Lightbulb Sun and Recordings will also be re-released later this year, so I'll hold off on buying used copies of those (if I can wait).

Porcupine Tree have restored my faith in rock music again. I haven't been this excited about music since the good old days. In fact, thanks to Porcupine Tree, the good old days are here again. Unfortunately you just can't hear great music like this on the radio, so the only way to know it's there is for people who know about it to spread the word. For anyone who loves Pink Floyd, King Crimson, and Tangerine Dream I would say buy some Porcupine Tree. You'll probably wonder why you've never heard of them before as well. It surely shows the sad state of the music industry when something this good doesn't get the exposure it deserves.

Buy it. Play it. Buy a copy for a friend. Long Live Porcupine Tree.

If anyone has any recommendations beyond Porcupine Tree that they think I would like, I would appreciate it.

This DVD-A/DTS disc is as outstanding as the In Absentia release which won the award for best Surround Mix. It not only has both DVD-A and DTS formats but also has a full PCM Stereo recording of Deadwing included along with three extra DTS Surround tracks: Revenant; Mother and Child Divided, and Half-Light. Not much else to say except, BUY IT!! You won't be disappointed.

AMAZING. Best album of 2005, but even that doesn't do it justice. Best album of the millenium, so far. I hesitate to say best of all time, because of things like The Fragile and then all the Floyd and Beatles stuff that people could simply out-argue me about.

DEADWING: Thrilling opener, never gets old, 10 minutes that feel like nothing. Unrelenting, very Tool-like in places, but also has moments of pure PT bliss. Actually, this song is worse than Blackest Eyes as an opener, but not far behind.

SHALLOW: Steven Wilson describes this song as "a big dumb rock song, done in the way someone not dumb would do it". This song is awesome! Very straight ahead but intense and powerful, and no PT song could be complete without the major piano part contrasting with the heaviness.

LAZARUS: Well, this is the worst song on the album, sorry. People have said that this is better than Trains, and that is one of the most blatantly incorrect statements ever concocted, but oh well. Still a pretty nice song, nothing special, and not out of place.

HALO: Perfect song. Kickass bass line, awesome drums, cool spoken word in the verse, catchy chorus, awesome jam in 17/8 in the middle, and back again. Cannot go wrong, and sounds terrific as the live finale.

ARRIVING SOMEWHERE BUT NOT HERE: Well, everyone's talking about it, and I can't really argue. It's magnificent. A 12 minute song has never ever felt shorter. This song does not get repetitive, it does not get old, it's totally cathartic, and seeing it live was one of the highlights of my life.

MELLOTRON SCRATCH: Some people like this song more than others, and I personally feel like it's simply too long. But the harmonies at the end make it all worth it, and it's a good listen no matter what.

OPEN CAR: This song grew on me the most. It has a very interesting riff that seems to not really make sense or click at first, but once you "know" the song, it's excellent. Also awesome chorus, and a brilliant, quiet ending.

THE START OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL: This is my favorite song by Porcupine Tree. Completely haunting and genius. Awesome groove in the verse, a little action in 9/8, and a great catchy chorus that is so singable. My brother thinks that the piano section in the middle is a little bit cliche and overdone, but I don't, I think it fits terrifically and is not hackneyed at all. Such, such, such, SUCH a good song.

GLASS ARM SHATTERING: It's chill, it's very Floydian (most Floydian they sound on this album), hard to argue with, and a great ending.

SHESMOVEDON: Although this song is great in every way, I think that PT made a mistake by including this rerelease on the album, because it doesn't really sound any different than the one from Lightbulb Sun, but more importantly because So-Called Friend and Mother and Child Divided did not make the album, and these songs are both so awesome that Wilson should have included at least one of them on the A-side.

Here is the thing about Deadwing, compared with In Absentia: I think that Deadwing is a better album, but barely. The first 6 songs of In Absentia set the pace for the best album of all time, but the last six simply do not hold up, so InAbs is flawed and therefore worse than Deadwing, even though very little on Deadwing matches InAbs's beginning. Both are incredible albums and should be bought, bathed, fed, and treated like royalty. Either that, or Steve Wilson should.

While it's not quite as innovative or wide-ranging as its predecessor In Absentia, Porcupine Tree's latest is yet another tasty Pink-Floyd-meets-Opeth-by-way-of-Radiohead offering from one of the only bands to ever come close to making progressive rock sound cool. If you liked the genre-bending sounds and oddly layered arrangements of In Absentia, then this album should leave you grinning like, erm, a young person in a store that sells sweets, as it's chock full of all the elements that make PT such a brilliant and distinctive band. Once again, they combine crazy instrumental skills with intricate, unpredictable songwriting and the haunting, emotional vocals of Steven Wilson, who makes up in power for anything he might lack in polish. Though it contains only nine tracks, Deadwing has plenty of goodies to offer the discerning listener, as it cycles through a vast mix of sounds-ranging from the dark, dense, and metallic to the spacey and Floydian to the melodic and folky-often within the space of a single song. For the most part, this album is divdided between lengthy, multifaceted epics (Arriving Somewhere But Not Here, Deadwing), and shorter, sharper rockers marked by striking riffs and surprisingly infectious choruses (Halo, Start of Something Beautiful). Naturally, this being PT, things aren't that simple, as there are plenty of variations on the theme to be found as well: hypnotic keyboard textures drift in and out of the midtempo, riff-driven gallop of the title track; the angry, assaultive guitar crunch of Shallow segues without warning into a disarmingly pretty piano-backed vocal melody before lurching back to metal with a vicious chorus; and Glass Arm Shattering ends everything on a languid, mellow note. As on their previous album, perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of PT's approach is their restraint: unlike certain other bands in the oft-derided prog metal genre (Dream Theater come up often, although there are many far worse offenders), nothing about PT's songs ever sounds forced or pretentious, even when they flirt with (or go past) the ten-minute mark, I've yet to hear a PT song overstay its welcome. And, fortunately, there are still no keyboard solos.

At the time of this writing, this album is number 116 on the ProgArchives.com Most Popular Album List. Considering that one of the factors affecting the ranking on this list is the number of reviews submitted, that's pretty high for an album that's only one year old. It is also the number one album of 2005 according to their reviewers.

One of the disadvantages of being an old fuddy-duddy with a wife, kids, jobs, etc., is that you get out of touch with the music scene. You listen to the albums you bought as a kid decades ago and you listen to the radio. And you forget that musicians are still making vibrant music. You forget that musicians have always, and will always, go past the limits set by radio marketers.

And so I decided that I needed to hear what was currently being created by "progressive" rock bands. And I purchased this album.

My only previous exposure to PORCUPINE TREE were the tracks played on my XM radio (channel 51 - Music Lab). And when you listen to the radio at work or in the car, it's easy to just lump everything together. I know they've played live at the XM studios several times, but that was the limits of my knowledge.

I really enjoyed the album. Deadwing isn't a thrash metal album, or even a hard rock album, but on several songs uses thematic elements of hard rock to push the mood. But on other songs the mood tends towards a quietness that rivals YES at its most New Age. The songs are not limited to what is commercial, but evolve on their own.

On the other hand, my twelve year old daughter wasn't thrilled with the album. She thought that the songs changed too much. However, she has copied "Open Car" onto her iPod and had it featured on her MySpace page. At 3:46 in length, it's probably the most commercial of the songs on the album.

This is a great album to remind an old fuddy-duddy that music can still be fresh and original.