The title of Porcupine Tree’s Closure/Continuation reads like a immediate from a choose-your-own-adventure novel that the authors haven’t completed writing but. The UK prog-rock band’s eleventh studio album comes after greater than a decade of silence, a hiatus throughout which founder and sole fixed member Steven Wilson made 5 solo data. Between these more and more non-proggy albums and a gentle aspect gig remixing traditional albums, Wilson appeared content material. However the gravitational pull of Porcupine Tree has yanked him again into orbit—in the meanwhile, at the very least. “I genuinely don’t know whether or not that is closure or the beginning of one other persevering with strand of the band’s profession,” Wilson informed The Guardian in March. On Closure/Continuation, this uncertainty arises by means of a rediscovered sense of musical volatility, a welcome rejoinder to 2009’s tedious, burnout-induced The Incident.
Wilson began Porcupine Tree in 1987 as one thing barely greater than a joke however significantly lower than the wildly formidable band it grew to become. Hand-dubbed demo tapes with names like Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm and Love, Loss of life & Mussolini have been cheeky satires of England’s stuffy progressive rock custom, however like Jethro Tull’s unintended traditional Thick as a Brick, additionally they utilized its type. By 1996’s Signify, Porcupine Tree had added keyboardist Richard Barbieri, bassist Colin Edwin, and drummer Chris Maitland, and the presence of collaborators helped hone Wilson’s exploratory items into sharp rock songs. The band reshaped itself as soon as once more when Wilson fell in love with Opeth’s Nonetheless Life and struck up an alliance with their frontman, Mikael Åkerfeldt. The unfastened trilogy of 2002’s In Absentia, 2005’s Deadwing, and 2007’s Concern of a Clean Planet bears the mark of that friendship, augmenting the band’s tightly wound prog with crunching, metallic riffage. Future King Crimson drummer Gavin Harrison changed Maitland behind the package on these data, and his pummeling but dexterous taking part in suited the heavier materials nicely.
When Porcupine Tree departed the Royal Albert Corridor stage on October 14, 2010, Wilson knew it will be their final present for an indefinite interval. Barbieri and Harrison, who by then accomplished the band’s core trio, had not been knowledgeable. “You may’t assist however really feel bitter and damage,” Barbieri informed The Guardian, and their reunion on Closure/Continuation led to a reshaping of the band’s inventive course of. Regardless of recording their components remotely, Wilson, Barbieri, and Harrison labored in nearer collaboration than ever earlier than. Of the seven songs on the usual version of the album, solely “Of the New Day” was penned solely by Wilson—a stark distinction to the writing credit of each different Porcupine Tree file. The three musicians steadily sound like they’re working by means of their decade of estrangement in actual time, giving the songs a creeping, anxious pressure.
