THE OVERVIEW

Mr. Wilson's 2025 offering shows his return to science and space perspective themes as well as a return to the kind of music he was making in the early years of his Porcupine Tree infancy: the Pink Floyd and Beatles-inspired stuff before his collaborators became as important to the music as his own ideas and inputs.

1. "Objects Outlive Us" (23:17) (44.25/50): - "No Monkey's Paw" (1:59) - opens with electronica vocal, sounding like Steven's attempt at a James Blake song. Not bad! (4.375/5) - "The Buddha of the Modern Age" (2:26) - Paul McCartney-sounding piano, cymbal play, chant-proclamation vocals delivered at first via solo voce but then with banked full "world" choir. (4.375/5) - "Objects: Meanwhile" (6:31) - harkening back to Steven's "current events" perspective songs with acoustic guitar strumming, piano chord hits, big synth and guitar chords and Steven's astute and poetic observational commentary over the top. Randy McStine's microtonal guitar play in the instrumental section, pedal steel guitar beneath the second verse. Macho-bass leads the way into a heavier motif in the second half of the instrumental passage. Then strumming acoustic guitars, synth and piano inputs resurface for Steven to continue his observational rant. (8.875/10) - "The Cicerones / Ark" (3:42) - a mathematical weave of arpeggiating piano and guitar guitar chords peppered with bouncy synth and distorted electric guitar flourishes leads into this slow build motif over which Steven & Co. chant a list with repetitious urgency. (8.75/10) - "Cosmic Sons of Toil" (3:00) - continue the bouncy (fast-oscillating volume control) synth chords only add chunky jazz bass, sophisticated syncopated drumming, complex chord progressions, and solos from rhythm guitar (Steven), lead guitar (Randy), keyboard (Adam), and some pretty awesome bass and drum play. This is pretty fresh: not unlike the genius Steven was trying to express on Grace for Drowning. (8.875/10) - "No Ghost on the Moor / Heat Death of the Universe" (6:00) - opens with deep space synth before Steven (or some other male voice) joins in with a high falsetto voice at 0:30. Steven's normal voice (sounding a lot like Steve Hogarth) proceeds over "Sky Moves Sideways" echo snare beat and synth washes. Randy McStine microtonal infinity guitar solo in the third minute is interesting and unusual. Pink Floyd/Radiohead "Subterranean Homesick Alien" sound and chord palette rises to dominate the fifth minute as Randy's guitar goes Frippertronic. I like it. (But then, I loved "Sky" and "Homesick Alien.") (9/10)

2. "The Overview" (18:27) : - "Perspective" - trip-hoppy instrumental space music with astronomy science facts & distances being recited over the top. Steven is using a lot of very familiar sounds, chords, and chord progressions (from his own previous works). - "A Beautiful Infinity I" - strumming acoustic guitars with Steven singing over the voice. Again, so much of this we've heard before in Steven's previous works; the effects, the voice styling, the guitars, the Pink Floyd chords, the Beatles/XTC sound effects and engineering techniques. - "Borrowed Atoms" - - "A Beautiful Infinity II" - Some of this even goes back as far as "The Sky Moves Sideways" and "Every Home Is Wired" and "Stars Die." - "Infinity Measured in Moments" - the coolest movement of the suite with its syncopated rhythm pattern, layered synths, guitars, and choral vocals. There feels some originality in this mélange. I love the presence/use of ukelele/mandolin and banjo! - "Permanence" - space ambient synth chords that sound like the sexy love music Vangelis put in his Blade Runner soundtrack. Even the love-time sax is fitting. Just waiting for Barry White's voice to enter to narrate the foreplay. There is so much that I love about this song--just as there is so much that I love about everything Steven did in the 1990s and his more recent solo discography--yet there are elements of everything that rub me a little the wrong way: much of which results in my disappointing reaction of "I've heard this before" or "he's used this before." (35.5/40)

Total Time 41:44

My single most dominant "complaint" about the music on this album is how cut-and-paste patchworked it is with so much of Steven's past sounds, riffs, "tricks," and styles. Otherwise, this is another brilliant "time capsule" of art. My second much smaller "complaint" is that the perspectives offered here on The Overview are not as obvious as they were on Fear of a Blank Planet or Hand. Cannot. Erase. --two albums that I consider among the best representatives of 21st Century "first world" Homo sapiens sapiens. Perhaps Steven's perspectives are a bit more subjective and isolated than before and, thus, sometimes tough to interpret.

B-/3.5 stars; despite the rather low rating, I still greatly admire this album as a wonderful representative of the genius of the one and only Steven Wilson. I'll rate it up to four stars as it is an excellent exhibition of progressive rock music that most every prog lover will enjoy and despite the over-familiarity of a lot of its ideas and sounds for we who know Steven's discography fairly well.

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