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Album Rating: 3.0
People Who Eat the Darkness reminds me of PT's Deadwing, which is such a nostalgic feeling given how much I adore that album.
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Deadwing is still the best album he's been part of since it came out, and yea a few moments on here remind of it in a good way.
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I like this album, but come on:
They laugh and sneer 'cos they know you're weak
But I'll make them pay with an IED
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
I used to defend Wilson against the critics regarding his lyrics, since I always found something great in some of them
But now? daaaaaaaaaaaaamn
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Yep, this is one of his worst ever lyrically indeed.
| | | Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off
I re-posted my 'full' comment below. It's an obvious provocation, yet I really can't get over all the disappointing aspects of this album to appriciate the good in it.
I like your point of view RikRoach7, why don't you write a more balanced, proper review? Because I did but it sucks and it'll soon be deleted as it deserves.
It's full of rave celebrating reviwes of TTB around, ppl should know this is not SW at his best at all. This is -to me- music business flirting with an artist that surrender to the sirens.
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I respect your attempt at a more detailed comment and I agree that this is a disappointingly harmless album. However, calling this "actualized eigthies synth pop" is just beyond me. Which song(s) are you talking about? Even ignoring the Eurovision Festival rambing that is most obviously a blunt exaggaration (if it isn't - have you ever heard how >actual< eurovision festival music sounds like?), you are basically throwing around terms contaminated by a negative connotation while most of them don't actually fit the music. You spend most of your words trying to draw a picture of Wilson and his intends that the reader is supposed to hate and that's not constructive. That's only rhetoric.
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
Oh, now that I'm at it, I might as well give a bit of my own opinion on this album. After one listening, I think it's half-assed. It clearly borrows elements of art rock of the 80s (Peter Gabriel etc), but that's not a bad thing in itself. The Raven also borrowed a lot from 70's prog rock and succeeded because of how well it was arranged and how well it fit what he wanted to express - telling ghost stories in the sound of a genre of times long gone, what could be more suitable? This time it all seems to be a hollow shell, since the elements are tacked on one another without really feeling like they have been thought through. The whole album doesn't seem to know where to go and what to express most of the time, and the lyrical topics seem forced and don't add anything to the typical things you'd expect a 50 year old guy to say about modern technology, society and stuff.
That said, there are positive things to this album and a lot of them intensify towards the end imo. Song of I is even one of the best songs of his whole solo career. Most of the things I said about this album as a whole don't apply to that song, but of course, that doesn't keep the whole thing from seeming half-baked and not self-confident enough for what it was trying to be. It's obvious: Some people blame him for leaving behind prog, some blame him for reviving old ideas (from the prog days) - well it's both of it, more or less, and that's the problem.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off
Agreed with Rik's assessment of that guy's comment. You don't have to think this is amazing or even great, but to call it 80s synth pop is just inaccurate. For all the publicity this pushed about being inspired by 80s art pop/rock that's as far as it goes. This is his songwriting through and through, with some similarities to late 90s/early 2000s PT. No one's saying it's better than that material, but those albums had plenty of straightforward songwriting choices at times, like this one sometimes has.
Raven had two songs that were very modern sounding I thought, The Pin Drop and t/t, with the other four songs having some influences here and there of 70s prog rock, but not a ripoff or anything like that.
About the lyrics: aside from a few lines here and there they aren't bad, just solid. They can be very surface level and on the nose, but I don't expect consistently brilliant lyrics from him, just music. I also never said the lyrics in Detonation were really great, that was other people.
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"but to call it 80s synth pop is just inaccurate"
That wouldn't be a bad thing at all, though I agree it doesn't sound like it
Just wanted to point that out since many people think of 80's pop as an immediate synonym of crappy music
| | | Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off
It’s his Falling Into Infinity, for better or worse.
Surely, after so many stands against disposable music, easy listening and the posing of various mainstream wonders, to overexpose this way now and release such a pander album, it’s at least controversial for his intellectual honesty.
The often mentioned comparison with Stupid Dream is a stab to the heart of Porcupine Tree: that was a prog album inspired, sincere and spontaneous, with echoes of Beatles and psychedelic rock. While TTB is mostly a revised and actualized eighties synth pop, entirely assembled and chiseled to maximize the commercial potential of SW by emasculating the contents, trivializing the experimental vein and mortifying the artistic ambitions of Insurgentes and GfD.
The Prog-Pop we’ve heard of is not an oxymoron or a velleity, you can tell by the works of the Dear Hunter, Dredg or Knifeworld; and the shift of genre could only upset some irreducible ol’ MetlaHead, given that even Katatonia, Ulver ecc. have operated mainly approved radical mutations themselves. Nobody in fact is arguing about the incoherence of Wilson, except for his previous statements, rather than a general debasement of what it was legit to expect. Just like Opeth, what detractors feel missing compared to the earlier stuff, is the layering and richness of a team job; a dry up of the songwriting in favor of a mannerist planning of the style that will lead each track.
Refined pop as well exists of course and, especially in the latter past, Elton John, Bowie or Bjork have shown to maintain an integrity and continuity even when aiming to a massive audience. On the other side, bands like Pink Floyd in the past or Radiohead today are –still- achieving huge results while keeping intact their own idea of music, occupying the narrow space nowadays saved on the surface of business for all that is not pure marketing stuff.
Regarding what can be considered Contemporary Prog, Wilson having spent some time in Kscope, knows well that is plenty of great releases around, Gazpacho, Thank You Scientist, Agent Fresco and many other.
| | | Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off
I have been truly supporting SW since Signify, still it takes the courage to admit, without being snob, that this album marks a self-reported creative drift, depressing and sometime embarrassing, no matter all several rave justifications brought to us.
Possibly, beyond personal tastes, the Raven represents his professional apogee, whereas balance is found among compositional rushes, an undeniable class, and the ability to rationalize the overflowing instrumental qualities of the involved musicians, making it all accessible and widely enjoyable on different levels.
H.C.E. was already diluting the musical attitude of Wilson, revealing the tendency toward sounds way more polished and catchy than usual, matched with a pretentious concept beneath.
TTB could be a bunch of redrawn outtakes, it alternate indefensible over tidy refrains, good for the next Eurovision Festival, with sickly, sometime whining, re-chewed elements of Wilson repertoire; all in order to obtain an effect of immediacy, sadly without the quality of truly great pop songs. Giving up to any originality, the output is a denial of a career spent evolving and researching for new solutions. It all ends up to be his most harmless LP, a narcissistic attempt to monetize years gone building a success within a niche, by moving to a major label, ensuring himself a powerful promotion.
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sometimes awful lyrics are fun
| | | Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off
Steven Wilson is the last artist I'd go to if I wanted to listen to fun music
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he has some fun music
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steven wilson is the last artist i'd go to if i wanted to listen to music
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
rip
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I should add that most of these songs would work better if someone else sung them imo. His voice fit the distressed, unsettled mood of albums like FOABP or HCE, but he just can't get the lively feeling of this album across as well as it requires
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Great setlist, even if his string snapped
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TVOez5ZXB4
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
he continues releasing many vids promoting his new album, huh? He's living the dream.
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