Porcupine Tree Deadwing

“Deadwing” is not the disc everyone was expecting from Porcupine Tree, not after the insanely addictive “In Absentia”, but that may well be the point. The band, specifically lead singer / guitarist Steven Wilson, said it would be heavier and in spots it is. He said it would be rockier and, as well, this is true. It’s also dipping the big toe into the band’s prog side, as witnessed by the closing “Glass Arm Shattering”, reminiscent of material from the PT epic “The Sky Moved Sideways”. It is, in most aspects, deserving of every one of its four stars, but the one thing it isn’t is… better than “In Absentia”.

Put into perspective, this isn’t the slam it initially appears to be. “In Absentia” came out of nowhere and mixed hundreds of disparate elements into one of the most unique offerings at that time, and forced me to seek out the rest of the Porcupine Tree output. Consider that disc as being at the very height of the rollercoaster, where “Deadwing” finds itself in a downhill run position. It couldn’t possibly match that impact, but by that same comparison, very few bands can match “Deadwing” and aren’t even in the same park.

Opening with the title track, the listener is greeted into a darker place and deftly mixes up the melodic and the hard. Wilson’s punchy, riff-infused guitar delivery and Richard Barbieri’s synth elements wrap around each other for nine-plus minutes but never feels tiresome or ridiculously drawn out. The shorter second track, “Shallow”, should make hard rock fans very happy and, once again, mixes a bluesy verse line with an acoustic bridge line, then tumbles into a blistering chorus. All the while, Wilson’s vocal delivery is in complete control. He doesn’t scream, grunt, whine or whinge; the usual outcomes in the hard rock subgenre. This is elegantly made clear by track three, the beautiful classic-rock of “Lazarus”. Wilson’s reading of “Follow me down to the valley below / the moonlight is bleeding from out of your soul” over a largely acoustic arrangement raises the hairs on the back of the neck, in a good way.

The revelation of “Deadwing” is the interplay between bassist Colin Edwin and drummer Gavin Harrison. Somehow they’ve managed to lay in fairly standard time signatures, but do so with equal amounts of finesse and rumbling power. It’s a highwire act for sure where, on one side, there could be a boring and bland rhythm and, on the other side, there could be weird tricky rhythm flips for no vital reason. Right in-between is Edwin’s rolling bass, clean but energetic, and Harrison’s impressive underpinning of double-bass drumming. The lure of the double-bass has ruined many a rock tune, when the drummer decides to run a marathon rather than keep a beat, but not here. The closest I can come to an association would be Rush’s Neil Peart, where the emphasis isn’t about being flashy but on getting from bar to bar in fresh ways.

I contend that “Deadwing” would be a monster were it my first impression of this band, it is that good. And as I said before, the majority of the competition looks absolutely anemic when set back to back. What it lacks are those quieter moments, more of those songs like “Lazarus” that firmly latch themselves into the consciousness and linger in a pleasant way. Sure, the rest of the tracks presented are uniformly excellent, but they have a way of telegraphing what’s coming. The full-blown headbang that appears midway through the prog epic “Arriving Somewhere But Not Here” doesn’t come as a surprise. The rocky chorus of “The Start Of Something Beautiful” also flows easily into contrasts… I have to think both songs would be more startling if they were set together with a couple more restrained songs. Nonetheless, both songs are infinitely more entertaining than a lot of what passes for modern rock.

I guess what I’m saying is that the band has really done well on this release but is slightly handicapped by being too good. Their previous disc was just that strong, but “Deadwing” is still a worthy follow-up, deserving of real estate in your CD player. Just don’t forget to turn up the bass, keep your hands behind the safety bar and enjoy the ride.