GRACE FOR DROWNING

Hi fellow Prog rockers and music lovers. Steven Wilson, early into his solo career comes out with an album that has every bit of sophistication, imagination and production quality of the great albums we know and love from the golden age of prog rock with a slight sense of contemporary.

Featuring some guest musicians that we are all well acquainted with such as Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater) and Steve Hackett (Yes) and the somewhat familiar lineup of long time collaborators Nick Beggs and Theo Travis the musicianship is high quality but in some parts more so in terms of creativity and or imagination rather than "sport" playing although they have their individual moments to shine in their own right.

The album has a very early 70's vertigo swirl record production sound to the music that I would classify as eclectic/prog/fusion rock and in my view is more a night time album where you have the time and lack of distractions so one can really dig deep into the music because there is a lot of great content along with quite long tracks.

I give this Album a solid 4 stars and in my view it is definitely SW's best prog/eclectic fusion rock album which conjures up all the elements of a classic vertigo swirl album from the early 70's and beyond with added requiem/choir parts , beautiful use of space/atmosphere along with some contemporary programming of course has a beautiful audiophile engineering production standard throughout the album as we have come to expect from this artist.

Definitely get this album, you will not be dissapointed but approach with an open mind and allow enough time to hear the whole album as it has a flow to the tracks. This album definitely grew on me after a few full album listens and now its my favourite from Steven. GET THE SURROUND SOUND VERION AND ENJOY IN 5.1