Review Summary: Not quite a comeback but certainly a pleasant space rock venture
Taking its title from the overwhelming sense of perspective astronauts get when looking at our pale blue dot in orbit, it’s only fitting for The Overview to see Steven Wilson fully delving into space rock. The genre has been a low key component of his formula since the earliest days of Porcupine Tree and the heavy emphasis on atmospheric soundscapes always feels in character. The loose structuring also reminds one of 2011’s Grace For Drowning, albeit with a comparably compact presentation.
Speaking of which, it’s a little ironic to note how an album consisting of two twenty-ish minute side-long epics can feel rather sparse at times. Granted much of that is due to the tracks cycling between ambient swells and gentle folkish ditties coming the closest to proper songs rounded out by the occasional heavy prog instrumental tangent. The segmented movements within them do make it easier to feel out the varying dynamics, but the loose nature of the shifts can make them feel more like guidelines than rigidly sequences. Either way, the lush instrumentation and reassuring vocals do capture the sort of detached peace that one imagines while floating in the cosmos.
I also appreciate how the two tracks have individual character while sharing similar ebbs and flows, “Objects Outlive Us” providing a sort of overhead glimpse of the everyday hustle and bustle down on earth while the title track reaches further and further out into the solar system with an increasingly distant look back. The first may be my favorite of the two with “Objects: Meanwhile” featuring some memorably driving verses that play well with the bookending vocal crescendos on “The Buddha of the Modern Age” and “The Cicerones/Ark.” The title track leans more on those ambient vibes with the periodic spoken word denoting planetary distance, and the airy flow from “A Beautiful Infinity/Borrowed Atoms” to “Infinity Measured in Moments” is quite gorgeous.
While I wouldn’t put The Overview in the same league as Steven Wilson’s most definitive works, it ultimately makes for a pleasant listen. The contradictory presentation of sprawling space epics set to a brief overall length can make the sense of scope a little wonky, making one wonder if it could’ve been a bit more grandiose or had its dynamics taken to even further extents. But at the same time, the musicianship fits splendidly and the personality displayed is more agreeable than it’s been in a while. I’m not sure if it’s quite a return to form but Wilson diehards should be satisfied.
