Steven Wilson: Insurgentes

Insurgentes

Best song: Salvaging

Worst song: Twilight Coda

Overall grade: 5

Author’s note: I know, I know. I said I wouldn’t review an artist’s solo career before I was done with their band work, and I’ve broken that rule after not even a month. But I’m going to see Steven Wilson in October (already counting down to this!) and I really want to have his solo stuff reviewed by then – and besides, he has so many bands that it would take me years to review everything associated with his name. But I will definitely review Porcupine Tree after, and maybe Blackfield, and maybe Storm Corrosion.

Steven Wilson is a music reviewer’s dream. He has a kind of musical vision and creativity that I can’t even begin to imagine – every project he’s put his name to has been in a very different style from the last, and he seems to be able to work with all these different projects simultaneously. Despite this or because of this, it took around eighteen years for him to release a real solo album, although there were a few singles before this, mostly covers that are complete rearrangements of the originals. Now, I do have a minor obsession with the guy that’s similar to my minor obsessions with Rick Wakeman and Brian Eno, but I’ll be the first to admit that this album is flawed. In all previous efforts, Wilson’s had a writing partner, someone to filter through and edit everything he might write. It’s possible that at this point he hasn’t worked out how to do this for himself, and the record suffers for it.

This album is probably most similar in style to the earliest Porcupine Tree work, yet echoes can be found of all Wilson’s collaborations. For example, that gorgeously melodic opening to the first song, ‘Harmony Korine’ is quite reminiscent of his work with Blackfield. It’s a good title for it too, as the song does seem to be very harmonious and peaceful throughout. There’s no dissonance or real heaviness, yet it still seems to be first and foremost a rock song.

The next ‘Abandoner’ is very different with its distorted drum intro and much clearer vocals. The middle section to this one is almost ambient, and passages similar to this one appear in quite a few songs on the record. As this is, above all, an album that you should sit down and properly listen to, I think some of these kind of sections could be trimmed down, but none of them have ridiculous lengths – just when your mind starts to wander completely, you’re jolted back into the music by some interruption. In this song’s case, it’s a sudden burst of static white noise.

I really love ‘Salvaging’, one of the longer tracks here, which is evil and foreboding in both the instrumentation and Steven’s vocals. It seems like a kind of tarnished beauty, and now that I think about that more, that could be the theme for the entire album. It’s full of beautiful melodies which are constantly being interrupted or tainted.

The album’s a little schizophrenic in places, with Wilson taking inspiration from many different genres of music. A couple of tracks, ‘Veneno Para Las Hadas’ (translation: poison for the fairies) and ‘Get All You Deserve’ are very slow and close to shoegaze. They could put you in a trance if you’re not careful. But then there’s ‘Only Child’, which is the album’s heaviest song that’s nothing if not post-punk, considering how dark and rhythmic it is. ‘No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun’ (man, these titles are eating into my word count) is the big centrepiece and it’s very experimental, while ‘Significant Other’ has an actual hook! Shocking stuff!

Wilson himself claims to love producing records more than anything else, and I don’t claim to be an expert on this but I can’t find a single fault with the production here. It’s varied and interesting, always fitting with the songs without being the thing that defines them.

One thing this album does do is fulfil the literal meaning of ‘progressive rock’. Every song changes partway through and ends up in a different place to where it started. The album as a whole, however, is very cyclical, as the title track refers back to the opener… an invitation to put the whole thing on repeat? Sure, why not?