In many highbrow musical circles, Steven Wilson is the most important man in progressive rock.
With a 30 year roll-call of achievements (not least in fronting the seminal Porcupine Tree), he’s done more for removing the stigma of ‘prog’ as being a dirty simile for ‘out-dated and indulgent’ than most.
His music is unapologetically prog while his methods preserve the genre’s heritage; namely in his production duties mixing and reissuing titans like King Crimson, ELP, and Yes
The fingerprints of those bands can be found all over Wilson’s DNA but it’s the synthesis of those influences with thoroughly contemporary touchstones that positions the prolific musician as both a current day torchbearer and a consistent forward-thinker.
As such, there’s few better posited to deliver a live show that’s rooted in the antiquated rock traditions worth preserving, with a nice modern, personalised touch.
Most notably – given Wilson lives his audiophilia as much as he preaches it – is that his live audio is crystal clear. The impact of which is immediately felt in the whip-crack intro of opening epic ‘Luminol’, the venue soon billowing with the immaculate benefits of a unique surround sound set-up.
There’s plenty visually to engorge on too, with a sophisticated light show of probing searchlights and colours, along with screen projections to punctuate the inherent drama of the music through animation and filmed footage.
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But even such trimmings can’t compete with the immersion of the music itself, less songs as they are sweeping cinematic compositions, grand in scope and symphonic in execution.
Performing the entirety of his latest album, the supernatural folkore-inspired set, The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories), as well as selections from solo album, Insurgentes and Grace For Drowning, the concert may be under Steven Wilson’s name, but its unthinkable without the aid of the elite backing band he’s assembled.
His five enlisted musicians are virtuosos all, but also possess the discipline to know when and where to flourish in the spotlight.
With a thick pair of shades framed beneath his wiccan mane, bassist Nick Beggs cuts an intimidatingly cool figure stage right, and along with drummer Chad Wackerman propped behind him, forms an impeccable rhythmic bed.
Legendary keys player Adam Holzman consistently proves his worth – especially when he is given a concert-style piano solo as a prefix to ‘Deform To Form A Star’ – adding shades of drama and light.
Theo Travis offers sax, flute, and clarinet in a series of essential embellishments, in a spectrum from watery colours to dissonant squalls, and in the frontline is guitarist Guthrie Govan.
Wilson would be the first to admit that he is a better arranger than he is guitarist, but Govan more than articulates his sonic imaginings while satisfying the axe-heads in the room with his firework displays of fret-fondling, the first of many arriving during the surging rise and fall dynamics of ‘The Pin Drop’.
Out front is Wilson – who moves fluidly from guitar, acoustic, bass, keys, samples, and more besides.
His dynamically complex music demands such an array of players, liable to forge towards lush, shapely melodic passages (on the verdant ‘Drive Home’) as they are grinding industrial rock (the creeped-out monodrone of ‘Index’), and winding passages that take in metal, jazz, and experimentalism; opulent but never overbearing.
With epics regularly peaking north of the 10 minute mark, the ensemble don’t shy away from performing the longest, most involved material either, as Wilson himself jokingly points out.
“I’m not known for my three-minute pop songs,” he notes to a sea of knowing chuckles, before leaning into the forthright (four-minute-ish) ‘Postcard’, a beautifully simple number.
Juxtaposed with the labyrinthine twists and meaty improvisational heights of ‘The Holy Drinker’, it demonstrates the full, evocative journey the set takes, traversing huge swathes of sonic territory, often within the one number.
Most pointedly in ‘Raider II’, the 22 minute opus about serial killer Dennis Rader, (“known as BTK – Bind Torture Kill”), a slowly creeping blot of bleak dread that’s impressive as it is unsettling; like the aural equivalent of David Fincher’s Se7en with added instrumental noodling.
Elsewhere, ‘The Watchmaker’ it provides a theatrical flourish, with an instrumental prologue drawing a veil across the stage as projections play out the storytelling against the lush, baroque chords and plucked guitar.
It builds towards a spooked, shimmering mid-section and finally into a towering, triumphant coda that plays out like an interactive ghost story, it’s effect powerful and inimitably immersive.
Between trips, Wilson’s chatter breaks things up nicely while demonstrating he’s got a healthy dose of humility with his pretension.
A preamble to ‘Harmony Korine’ about the tune’s film director namesake via Spring Breakers is especially endearing. Wilson noting his long-term love of the controversial filmmaker before jesting: “I was listening to Arcade Fire in 1952… I’m a cool dude.”
Earlier in the set he quips, “One Direction are in town so I know you were torn,” commending the audience on their good taste.
While Wilson’s point is that his music is an acquired, challenging taste, the irony is that the prog luminary’s faithful are just as devoted in their own way as the manufactured boy band’s acolytes are.
Respectfully inaudible during performance then howling with appreciation at each piece’s conclusion.
The crowd are intensely beholden after the beautiful, blossoming “The Raven That Refused To Sing”, where after coaxing Wilson back for an encore, the audience erupts at the mention of Porcupine Tree.
Performing vintage PT track ‘Radioactive Toy’, one of the band’s earliest (taken from his late 80s output as a soloist and “technically” falling into the same solo repertoire), it demonstrates just far Steven Wilson has come.
The dirge-like histrionics and lumbering chromatic shifts may be dated (yet still charming), but demonstrate the sheer potential and vision Wilson had, even as a bedroom boffin mimicking his influences.
Here on the stage, some decades later, it’s clear why he now stands as the towering influential figure his own forebears once were to him; a masterful proprietor of music’s intelligent, emotive, extremes.
A true progressive indeed.
Setlist
Luminol
Drive Home
The Pin Drop
Postcard
The Holy Drinker
Deform To Form A Star
The Watchmaker (with Bass Communion video intro)
Index
Inusrgentes
Harmony Korine
No Part Of Me
Raider II
The Raven That Refused To Sing
Encore:
Radioactive Toy
