Album Rating: 4.5

Ugh I have such a love/hate relationships with SW's lyrics. I think I mostly hate his on-the-nose "modernity" references, like xbox, ipod, etc. Never gonna age well.

Album Rating: 4.5

Nice Choccy, it's worth it for tracks 2-4 which are just stunning to me, especially the last movement of Anesthetize.

I was thinking the other day about his lyrics and agree that he writes a lot of great ones, especially about ghosts, loss, and elusive subject matter, things like that. A lot of the ones about modernity can be cringy, and when he tries to be edgy or along those lines. Comes out especially on TtB and TFB. Grateful he releases instrumental versions of all his solo albums, and this album too actually.

Cite one actively good lyric SW has written since 2000

was he ever a good lyricist
srs question

never specifically rated him for it, but his lyrics on Signify and some of the stuff before defs added more than they detracted. Dark Matter/Waiting/Sleep of No Dreaming have some decent lines (and a couple of stinkers, but)

Album Rating: 3.0

Kill or keep

never again

Album Rating: 3.0

😵 RIP

KILL or KEEP will return!
but, I mean, giving In Absentia that treatment was maybe the most joyless experience I've had with the series including the one we did when I was dying of dental inflammation

Album Rating: 2.5

2000 is a kind of weird cutoff date, I also think Stupid Dream/Lightbulb Sun is SW's creative peak but they have some super corny lyrics too.



I've always liked "Did you ever imagine the last thing you'd hear as you're fading out was a song?"

Lol fair - couldn't remember enough lyrics from Stupid Dream to drag it (though what's come back to me since is not good) and figured someone would make a case for Lightbulb Sun. More than happy to shift it back a few years, but it ain't going forward

Album Rating: 3.0

“maybe the most joyless experience”



They tore the album apart yeh 😐

and then i forgot to publish whoops

Album Rating: 3.0

lol

Album Rating: 5.0

Stupid Dream has a lot of cool lyrics. Always loved some of the lines in A Smart Kid



"A spaceship from another star

They ask me where all the people are

What can I tell them?



I tell them I'm the only one

There was a war but I must have won

Please take me with you"

Album Rating: 2.5

Hmm forgot their was this line on Pure Narcotic



"You keep me waiting

You keep me alone in a room full of friends

You keep me hating

You keep me listening to the Bends"



Shitting on The Bends is pretty based

Definitely understand the crit of the lyrics here but looked at another way i think they’re basically perfect, the album is told entirely from the perspective of a depressed medicated kid so the awkwardness of SW’s lyricism ends up serving the concept.

I also used to hate the on the nose modernity stuff here but I’ve come around in the last year, SW can make it near impossible to suspend disbelief not just because of his lyricism but also because of his persona outside of the music, but if i just ignore that and let the album’s story wash over me all the pieces really come together on this one imo!

claiming SW gives adequate voice to the experience of depressed, medicated kids on the basis that they're both 'awkward' is a pretty brutal injustice imo. even teenage shut-ins deserve better than that t/t caricature. how much of this comes from experience btw? nothing about this album matches what i know about SW's own childhood (maybe he was more reclusive than i realised?) and i genuinely have no idea whether he researched the topic outside of newspaper stereotypes

Album Rating: 4.0

The first time I heard "don't hate me, I'm not special like you" I rage quit.

I think that’s a bit of a mischaracterization of what I said Johnny. Not saying that Steven Wilson is the voice of the generation that this album is about lol, just that the sometime over-directness and awkwardness of his lyrics actually end up sounding more like a kid talking