2023 Number 5: Steven Wilson

NIELS' TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2023: Number 5
Steven Wilson – The Harmony Codex

There’s developed this strange sense of unpleasablility around the Steven Wilson fanbase, like he’s only allowed to make one particular kind of music. As if the man hasn’t completely changed his entire sound every five years or so, from the space-rock beginnings of Porcupine Tree up until now. The enigma from Hemel Hempstead just follows his muse wherever it leads, and you gotta respect him for it.

That said, The Future Bites was a bit naff, and there was some cred to win back. He’s done so with his trippiest album since Up The Downstair, bringing his career more or less full circle, though it doesn’t sound much like early Tree. It doesn’t sound much like anything else. It’s a singular little thing, a cold, alienating, labyrinthine, foreboding, bleak electronic album that occasionally gets its warmth from an accoustic guitar, some vocal harmonies, strings or chords on the piano. The album has a lot of groove, with nods to those microrhythms and microtonal textures that are so in vogue right now with the musos. There’s some parallels with Peter Gabriel in the production, though Steven’s music is obviously a lot darker. The pieces can be quite soundscapey and content to kind of exist in their sonic space rather than be traditional songs. It’s all stubbornly resistant to easy categorization, though Impossible Tightrope and Staircase feel like he’s throwing the prog people a bone.

This was actually the hardest album to place on my list. There’s a case to be made it could be a deserving number one, equally that it doesn’t belong on my personal top ten list at all. It’s probably the most breath-takingly impressive album of the year, but it’s impressive like a piece of imposing architecture that you wouldn’t actually want to live in. Ultimately, I’ll place it just outside the top four. It doesn’t really feel like an album “for me” (he made one for me in 2015). It’s hard to connect with emotionally, but it is truly an overwhelming listen that occasionally leaves me gasping and actually filled with emotions, some of them uneasy ones. There’s a lot to enjoy, admire and pick apart here and, in my eyes, he’s definitely won back whatever cred he lost with TFB. He remains a fascinating enigma, and this is his most enigmatic album yet.