LIGHTBULB SUN

A year after the successful "Stupid Dream", the prolific Steven Wilson and his bandmates released "Lightbulb Sun" at the dawn of the 21st century. Porcupine Tree's sixth album maintains the general lines of its predecessor, leaving aside the intergalactic journeys and settles on planet earth, while maintaining the experimental and vaporous character to build introspective spaces of reflection from the sorrowful experiences of everyday life.

Hence, the album moves between melodies guided by unplugged rhythmic guitars like the opening "LBS", or the beautiful "Shesmovedon" and its sad refrain crowned by an overflowing and distorted guitar solo by Wilson over the hardened percussion of Chris Maitland, the gentleness of "Rest Will Flow", with Nick Parry's cello and the violins of the Minerva string quartet, or the correctness of "Where We Would Be" and its pleasant acoustic sounds, until reaching the album's climax with the extended "Russia on Ice", an atmospheric piece about alcoholism that unfolds among dark landscapes guided by Wilson's meditative voice, takes powerful and complex instrumental turns with Maitland very animated on percussion and Richard Barbieri on keyboards, and ends up resting among chimes and whispered synthesised sounds, undoubtedly one of the best parts of the album. And not to change the general mood, the delicate and emotive "Feel So Low" refers to a deep sadness for the lack of correspondence of the loved one that gives an ideal closure to a work dominated from beginning to end by melancholy.

When the album was finished recording, Maintland, Wilson's long-time sideman, left the band because of how absorbing being part of Porcupine Tree had become for him at the time.

"Lightbulb Sun", with its well-constructed musical structures and Wilson's usual superlative production work, consolidates Porcupine Tree as one of the main animators of the genre in the second part of the 90's and most of the 2000's, despite the fact that its leader mentioned on more than one occasion that the band should not be pigeonholed in any particular style.

Very good.

4 stars