TO THE BONE

Steven Wilson's next album was 2017's To the Bone. He'd never been shy about incorporating pop elements into his music, and he was open from the get-go that this would be his poppiest release to date. It's mostly smart pop-rock, but it's unimpressive. Song structures are predictable, instrumentation is pretty standard, and accessibility appears to have been a prime concern.

To the Bone isn't the flaming trainwreck I'd feared it would be (though the same can't be said of its artwork; whose idea was this album cover?), but it isn't particularly interesting. It doesn't offer much for those of us who most enjoy Porcupine Tree's late '90s and '00s material. Wilson has proven he can write interesting music with good pop hooks and conventional structures, but when he writes a whole album exclusively in that style, he seems to run thin on material. I acknowledge I am an outlier in the intensity of my distaste for this album. I'd never thought I'd use the word anodyne to describe Wilson's music, but that descriptor applies to an awful lot of the tracks here.

Wilson's pop album isn't all bad. There are a few good songs on it, but it should be noted that there are no really good songs on it. "The Same Asylum as Before" has some interesting moments, despite passages that remind one of churchy acoustic guitar music. "Permanating" is my favorite track on the album, partially because it's the place where Wilson most thoroughly dropped his pretension and made a straight pop-rock cut. He didn't try to pull any of his aren't-I-clever(-and-sad) moves and put out a direct piece of piano-pop. "People Who Eat Darkness" and "Detonation" are the most reminiscent of his past output and as such, are other highlights for me.

Most songs on To the Bone, though, follow the mold of songs like "Pariah", "Song of Unborn", and "Refuge". They're slow, bland ballads that take far too long to get going, if they do so at all.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/11/24/deep-dive-porcupine-tree-steven-wilson/