steven wilson
Steven Wilson on Porcupine Tree’s Unexpected, Slow-Simmering Reunion
By late 2021, the odds of a Porcupine Tree reunion seemed beyond slim. It had been 12 years since the alt-prog band’s 10th LP (and apparent swan song), 2009’s The Incident, and singer-songwriter Steven Wilson realized his rabid audience wasn’t counting on a follow-up. “Fans had probably given up on [us] ever making another record,” he tells SPIN, his polite eloquence downplaying a hilariously massive understatement. It’s also not like Wilson initially had Porcupine Tree on the brain. After The Incident, feeling trapped in a hamster wheel of expectations and unspoken resentments, he stepped aside to focus on other projects — including various collaborations (Storm Corrosion with Opeth‘s Mikael Akerfeldt), numerous remixing gigs (King Crimson, XTC), and a solo career...
Steven Wilson on Channeling Evil Spirits, Defying Expectations With New LP
Google Image search “Steven Wilson sadness meme,” and you’ll find plenty of hilarious results. His music rarely sounds depressing — despite the groans of the modern prog-rock community, he’s just as likely these days to channel Abba as Gentle Giant. But he does tend to explore the dark corners of the human psyche, from the ultra bleak conceptual framework of Porcupine Tree’s 2002 LP, In Absentia, to the tragic real-life story that inspired his 2015 solo LP, Hand. Cannot. Erase. If anyone could expertly channel the despair and division of the pandemic/Trump era, it’s this guy. And the songwriter’s perfectly titled new LP, The Future Bites, does traffic in the paranoia and general anxiety of our current dystopia. But Wilson finished writing the project in 2018 — it just happens to feel like ...
