Porcupine Tree - The Incident
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CD Details
Artist: Porcupine TreeEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2009-09-15
Music Label: Roadrunner Records
Product features:
- PORCUPINE TREE THE INCIDENT (2CD)
Music reviews of The Incident
Music Review: Boring exercise in Faffology
Rating: 1 Stars
This album is in no way or concept or a coherent work. It is 14 pieces of music, and I will review it as such:
1. Occam's Razor: What an unfortunate title for this song - if I were to remove everything unnecessary, nothing on this CD would be left! This song is just a bit of noise. If it's supposed to put me in some kind of mood, it doesn't.
2. The Blind House: This is the definition of a song that makes 5 minutes feel like an hour. Now I love having an hour filled with good music like Tales from Topographic Oceans, but this song has no real melody, and a really hollow, empty sound. The lyrics about "Real love/breath out/blind house" are very infantile, and delivered in a weak whiny voice. Wilson just isn't trying at all, and it shows - that's the point of it, I guess, but it really ticks me off to listen to such droll, grungey rubbish. With a bit of effort, *I* could give a better vocal performance, and that's pretty tragic. The song tapers off to nothing for a while, and when the guitar comes back in, it feels so forced and strained - the song had no momentum to begin with, so playing this stop/start trick has no effect other than highlighting how insipid and uninspiring the track is.
3. Great Expectations: Another terrible choice of titles: Yes, I had expectations for PT, and boy did this album destroy them! The song starts like a ballad - will it be something like the fantastic acoustic sections of Aqualung or ELP's Works albums? Maybe it could have been, but it is quickly destroyed by some growling guitar work. The whole piece descends into meaningless lyrics peppered by gratuitous electronics - quite a feat for such a short song.
4. Kneel and Disconnect: Most things on this album just don't work - bad choices, badly implemented, weak writing, uninspired playing etc. However, this is the song where we get an overt, utterly unforgivable sin: Whinging HARMONY. If you're going to sulk, do it in a corner, don't get a choir together and do it unison. Unlistenable.
5. Drawing the Line: Well, it's been over 10 minutes of faltering, halting faff, so I guess it's here that Wilson gives us the inevitable "rocking, rolling, riffing, rollicking" kind of... thing. If he took the peg off his noise and didn't just repeat the same four words endlessly, it may have worked. Instead, what we get here is an incredibly predictable, throw away piece of pop piffle - without the texturing and layering that usually makes such a repetitive rehearsal at least bearable. When the guitar solo gets lost in its own echo, and Wilson actually tries to get anthemic the fiftieth time he tells me he's shutting me out, the song proves just how laughably stupid it actually is. Most songs like this try to keep a fact like that a secret.
6. The Incident: Now Wilson realises he shouldn't get through half the album without mentioning the supposed theme that ties these songs together (but doesn't), so he gives a moody spoken word `song' about - you guessed it - an INCIDENT of some description. I guess this is supposed to give some weight to the ridiculous pretence that this is a prog rock epic. Sorry - it doesn't walk like a duck or quack like a duck, so writing that it's a duck on the back cover won't convince me otherwise. I really don't know how spoken word can be made to work on a music album - and after listening to this, I remain mystified. Trying to save a half-baked, drawn out, boring song with some ridiculous high-hat work half-way through is a particularly poor choice, I might add. I understand that Wilson just wants to be loved, so maybe he should make an album that's not so punishing and unrewarding.
7. Your Unpleasant Family: The first six tracks are bad enough - bad enough to make anyone who's not a hopeless fanboy run for the hills, I mean. But here we really drill down below rock bottom into the nasty stuff lying beneath. "Your unpleasant family smashed up my car/Perfectly uncalled for...How vile they are." This must be some kind of joke; it IS a joke, no doubt. But then we get falsetto - REALLY whiny falsetto! - and an emotive, droll, guitar solo. Yep folks, we're supposed to take this seriously and get all broken up about this. But families don't smash up cars (unless the dad is Mr T). CARS smash up cars - it's called a collision. What he's describing here isn't an incident at all, it's an ACCIDENT. The album falsely tries to craft all this emotion and depth where none exists. It's all so facile and transparently silly.
8. The Yellow Windows of the Evening Train: This song plays 1 organ note for a minute, and adds a second note for the next minute. No more than 2 notes for you! Another song that makes me feel better about myself because I could record something better - and I'm not a musician! Maybe this song is on a mission to offer *less* than any of the previous seven songs? Tall order, but it does fit the bill! Maybe the unpleasant family was on their way to church? Maybe this is background music that was supposed to be `filled in' later, but PT realised the rest of the album was already filler, so they just left it how it is? So many questions, so few answers - leaves us all dark and moody, doesn't it? One thing for sure is that we can appreciate the respite from the torrent of silly lyrics that rest of these songs assail us with. Wow - the song with the longest title has no lyrics - not even a beat! How artistic and EMO!
9. Time Flies: Nice melody on this one, but one melody does not an album make. Wilson tried to fix everyone's attention onto this song: He called it the heart of the album, extracted the single from it, and recorded a film clip for the single for good measure. Too bad it has nothing to do with an incident! I'll tell you what's really wrong with this song, though: It's about Wilson. Singing a twelve minute song about yourself - especially on an album that's supposed to be about something else - is the ultimate way an artist jumps the shark. And then he does all these interviews telling everyone "Listen to this bit first; it's the greatest of them all"??? Unbelievable! Reminiscing about the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix really highlights how little PT have left to offer - and YET AGAIN I ask myself WHY they keep reminding me off this fact! I guess the target audience of this album agrees that "the best thing that you can do is take whatever comes to you". But I disagree; I'd rather go listen to Are You Experienced. Aside from the woeful subject matter, the song gives us what feels like an hour of ambient waste: guitar scales, alternating synth chords - it's nothing they haven't done many many times (and better) on previous albums. Musically, there's just nothing new here, even though they REALLY sound like they're trying: Even if the melody is catchy and all, the overall feel of this song is totally recycled: it's old, it's tired and it's trite. Throughout the build-up at the end, I spend the whole time saying to myself "This won't go anywhere, I know it." But then, when it goes nowhere, I *still* feel let down! Prog groups have found plenty of great places that build-ups can go; but here, it's like PT don't even want to try. Actually delivering something the end of the build-up wouldn't be dark and EMO enough, so instead we get nothing.
10. Degree Zero of Liberty: Musically, this is the same as Occam's Razor, with an equally disingenuous title. I understand that this album takes zero liberties with music, but that doesn't change the fact that I wish it did. I really do wish it offered me something worth listening to on any level.
11. Octane Twisted: I just dread writing about this song because I have nothing to say I haven't already said. And I guess that statement sums up this song quite well... Guess what: The layering of vocals highlights how repetitive the lyrics are! Who knew? And would you believe it - overdriving a guitar in a hollow, melodically weak and instrumentally vacuous song just sounds silly. What a revelation! This farcical song seems to have something to do with someone haemorrhaging. That certainly connects with my experience of listening to the album, but given the droll beat, I don't think we're supposed to care this time.
12. The Séance: Well, this song does seem to describe a séance. Not sure what makes that an incident as opposed to an EVENT, but we get the same vocal/harmonic section in this short song that we already endured in track 11 for some reason. Ha! Maybe, because this song contains a bit of song 11, and song 10 repeats song 1, this is a big concept album! Wow, I guess that makes it all clever and artistic and stuff. Too bad I seem to be missing the clever artistry of it all.
13. Circle of Manias: I think this song is supposed to be all dark and menacing - let's face it, `manias' sounds like `menaces'. The problem is that it sounds MORE like `bananas'. And given how quickly the menace dissolves into nothingness, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do other than throw a banana. Or perhaps a circle of bananas. Man, I'm hungry. Maybe this song is supposed to leave me hoping that witches in a coven do their thing to a synthesised guitar track? What it leaves me sure of is that PT completely lack the lyrics, vocals and drum work to do anything even slightly menacing or thrashy. So... why try? Why, Wilson? Just leave it off and stop trying to fill out this 55 minutes of faff for bananas sake.
14. I Drive the Hearse: And so this boring, faffaological album finishes in a big drawn out ho-hum about a hearse. It doesn't come to any conclusion or anything - any hopes from track 13 that there would be some kind of build up here are quickly dashed. PT lack the courage to match their dark guitar work with any beat or any vocals - and there's no way this lyrically bloated album would close without... more lyrical bloat. But rather than aim for some kind of integrity, we just get reminded that "silence is another way of saying what I want to say"... So, Wilson, you knew this, and yet still tortured us with lyrics like "she said nothing ever happens/If you don't make it happen/And if you can't laugh then smile"??? Well, I'm afraid I just can't take that advice. I am totally unable to smile at this album, but I am good humoured enough to laugh at it. Fine, hold your hand up to my face, but I'm still lauhging at you! It's surely better than taking out the razor blade like the album seems to want me to.
Overall, rubbish. Don't bother. Stay clear. Listen to a real album like Close to the Edge.
Description of The Incident
2009 two CD release from the Grammy-nominated modern Progressive Rock band. Porcupine Tree is fronted by Steven Wilson, who also is well-known for his work producing other artists, from Swedish Progressive Metal group Opeth, to Norwegian chanteuse Anja Garbarek. One of the only constants in Porcupine Tree's music is how it continues to evolve and confront the expectations of the band's fans from album to album. The Incident is their 10th studio album and takes the listener on a thrilling audio journey. In turns haunting, desolate, hypnotic and euphoric, its centre-piece is the title track: a stunning 55-minute musical statement that breaks down into 14 separate and often diverse (though interlinked) vignettes.Alternative Rock CDs
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