6. Steven Wilson –
To The Bone
Predictably, any
album by the reluctant King of Progressive Rock will end up at the
top of all the prog community's collective end-of-year list (it's
already topped the one at Prog Magazine). Some people will devoutly
worship everything His Wilsonness releases, regardless of what it is.
I'm obviously not that guy (I didn't get The Raven, for one thing).
Others will scream betrayal at the (seemingly) more accessible,
pop-oriented and even – gasp –
“commercial” leanings of this
year's To The Bone. I'm not
that guy either. I guess
I'm somewhere in the middle.
As
for Wilson himself, he
has long outgrown the
need to care about anyone's opinion. Alienate
the fanbase? Heck, if Mikael can do it...
Wilson is
making albums only for himself at this point, and it shows. He picks
a creative direction
and admirably sticks to it; in this case, making an intelligent,
somewhat subversive pop album in the vein of Peter Gabriel and Kate
Bush.
I
know my opinion doesn't
matter, but for the record: I
think To The Bone is
good, but not as good as Hand Cannot Erase, which
remains his most essential solo work.
There's a lot to enjoy at
the song level, tough on the album level I can't really see the whole
as more than the sum of its parts. Fortunately, SW never leaves the
prog too far behind, judging from things like “Detonation” and
“Refuge”. Only in prog rock is a harmonica solo one of the
coolest things you'll hear all year.
As for the “pop” thing:
If all pop songs were as good as “Permanating”, why, they could
make a pop fan out of me yet!
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten