SIGNIFY

Signify is the first album where the band is playing as a cohesive unit, as opposed to the previous few which were so dominated by Steven Wilson that they were practically solo albums. Besides this, the overall sound hasn't changed drastically; the Pink Floyd-like atmosphere is still present, but this album sees a bit more pop and alternative influence that would be explored more fully in future albums.

Song-wise, due to the pop-limitations, and overall number of songs, the tracks are for the most part short. Consequently, the structure of many of the songs isn't terribly diverse. Unfortunately, the songs that are longer usually suffer from overlong ambient parts. This was a problem with their past few albums, and still lingers in this one. The overall depressing, draggy nature of the songs certainly doesn't help either, especially for fans of up-beat and up-tempo music such as myself. However, they certainly do a great job with the Pink Floyd sound overall. Perhaps the only song I truly enjoy from beginning to end is Dark Matter.

Suffice it to say this is NOT Porcupine Tree at their best, in my opinion. It is simply too hard for this album to keep my attention with its overall incessant use of ambient sound and lack of strong melodies. I will praise the album for what its good at, but this is not the Porcupine Tree I prefer.

3/10