GRACE FOR DROWNING

I don't know how he manages to keep doing it, but Steven Wilson continues to zig zag all over the place with sound and styles, yet the quality is always of the highest order, both in songwriting and sound quality. Grace for Downing harkens back to glory days of progressive rock (mellotron all over the place, which is never a bad thing!), while still throwing in a lot of his unique twists on modern hard rock, resulting in a very fresh and organic-sounding piece of music. So many modern artists try to duplicate what was done decades ago, but fail to add any originality to it, which often comes off as sounding derivative, but Wilson has managed to make a modern progressive rock record which has nods to the past while definitely looking ahead to the future. With his 3rd solo album just around the corner, Wilson's creative musical window is still wide open!