I first discovered him on Radio Paradise, an eclectic internet streaming station listed in an older version of iTunes that supported internet radio. I listened to it during my prep time at school, and soon became hooked enough to start playing it at home as well. Steven Wilson was still with the band Porcupine Tree at the time and they had just released their album, In Absentia. Radio Paradise featured the song “.3” in their rotation, and after hearing it a few times I was curious enough to buy the CD. It turned out to be an amazing rock album. I began digging into their back catalog and discovered much of their history was a bit too psychedelic for my taste, but I still loved In Absentia and the albums that followed in relatively quick succession: Deadwing, Fear of a Blank Planet, and The Incident. The last one eventually became one of my favorite albums, and containing one of my favorite songs, “Time Flies.”
When Steven released his first solo album, Insurgentes, I was a little concerned it signaled the end of Porcupine Tree, since they had become one of my favorite bands. To this day I don’t know if the band has officially come to an end because there are perpetual rumors floating around online about possible reunions, which always seem to be scheduled to happen in another year or two, regardless of what year it is. If they are still together, they’re on one heck of an extended hiatus. In the meantime, Steven Wilson has put together a pretty impressive set of solo albums.
His most recent album, To the Bone, came out a year ago. It’s deceptively upbeat with a wider diversity of songs compared to his other solo work, although much of his career has been defined by genre-hopping, covering everything from metal to psychedelia to progressive to pop throughout his many different projects.
While being essentially a rock album, he's credited some of the songs being influenced by ABBA and Prince. He’s talked about how he had been such a huge Prince fan growing up, which makes a lot of sense considering the path his career has followed: A self-taught multi-instrumentalist making music with his friends as a kid, covering a lot of musical genres in his catalog, writing and producing songs for several different artists, periodically reinventing the live band he plays with but playing much of the music records by himself. No matter what direction he pursues or which sonic palette he works with for an album, it wouldn’t be a stretch to make the comparison that Steven Wilson is to progressive rock what Prince was to R&B.
I saw him perform earlier this month. It was a marathon of a show, coming in at close to four hours when you include the opening act (Ninet, an Israeli singer who has occasionally recorded with Steven and played a pretty great set herself). The show, much like his musical repertoire, covered a lot of different genres and even a few personal favorites: “Pariah” from the new album, and a twelve-minute Porcupine Tree epic called “Arriving Somewhere But Not Here.” There were a few others I would have loved to have heard him play, but there were also a few I didn’t expect that were nice surprises.
It was kind of a bucket list moment in a couple of ways, not just to see him perform live for the first time but to attend a rock show in a sweaty Seattle night club that went late into the night. In the weeks since I’ve found myself going back to revisit a lot of solo Steven Wilson as well as Porcupine Tree. I suspect that’s going to be something I continue throughout the summer months.
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