ON THE SUNDAY OF LIFE...

If I could rate any PT album less than 4 stars it would definitely be this one. Why? Simply because this album is more a Steven Wilson solo album rather than a true Porcupine Tree album with a "real" bass player and "real drummer". In this album Steven Wilson is more experimenting and plays all the instruments himself. This in it self is already rather astonishing I must say :-)

So what are the really great songs on "On The Sunday Of Life"? Well, actually I think there are only three:

1) the first one would be "Radioactive Toy". This song is a true PT classic and is often played as an encore during PT's live concerts. I also heard it play live once by Riverside and it was greatly "copied". I really enjoyed hearing this classic PT song being played by Riverside, my second favourite band, just after PT. 2) the second great song is called "Nine Cats" and this is a great acoustic piece. Great acoustic guitar accompanied by the warm voice of Steven Wilson. Really nice and funny lyrics too! I love this part:

"Fat toad stood in his ballet shoes Teaching sixteen kangaroos How to skip across a lake They found it hard to stay awake A pharaoh played a merry tune And watched nine cats dance on the moon I didn't know what all this meant I didn't know why I'd been sent."

All of the lyrics are really funny like that! :-) Too bad SW used a drum computer on this album: it makes it all sound a bit eerie. Maybe SW will decide to re-issue the album once and have the drum parts play by Gavin Harrison, just like on the re-issue of "Up The Downstair".

3) the third masterpiece of this album would be "It Will Rain For a Million Years". This track mostly is an instrumental ambient track with just some words spoken rather than sung by SW. It give a good idea where PT would go next with albums like "The Sky Moves Sideways". Together with "Radioactive Toy", these are really the two epics of On The Sunday Of Life.

Once again: it will be very hard for me, as a true PT fan, to rate any PT album less than 4 stars, but if there would be one, this would probably be it. Probably closer to 3.5 stars though.