To quote The Daily Telegraph, Steven Wilson is probably the most successful musician you have never heard of. After ten Porcupine Tree albums, Wilson turn to solo career in 2010, shooting his mother band in the head. Long story short, this is one of the most most important and the most influential prog rock artists who managed to avoid mainstream big time and gained superb reputation among critics and the audience. After thirty years of skipping mainstream, the guy has suddenly decided to join it. Why?
To The Bone is Wilson's fifth full length studio album. Always surprisingly good, Wilson prepared a new surprise this time around - a pop album. Is it any good? Compared to his two predecessors A Raven That Refused To Sing and masterpiece Hand.Cannot.Erase, this album is sugary lemonade. From brutally good progressive comprised of complex sonic structures, mature melodies and nefarious rhythms, Wilson decided to orient towards pop expression. It is not the same case as when Metallica recorded Black Album or Load. It is more as If Metallica released Re-Load on the trace of Madonna's Like A Virgin.
So what is going on? To The Bone is magnificently produced progressive pop rock record, with progressive getting lost in commercial sound. From the man who handled jazz fusion like a pro, I would expect at least more experimentation with pop other than dance melodies. Keeping in mind that this is an artist whose catalogue is the object of envy by many prog musicians, you can not avoid wondering what the hell had happened. For some reason, Steven Wilson has decided to make things more simple.
The album relatively has a flow and it is coherent in its attention. It is decently shallow album, with melodies that are easy to remember. Rhythm is mostly kicking, at some points it's even radical. The songs are structured and very well arranged, and what Wilson is singing about is far from banal. Altogether, everything sounds catchy, but there is something missing. And there is also something redundant.
Suspicious promotional single Permanating sounds like a middle age crisis. Maybe Wilson is growing as an artist and perfecting his pop skills, but I can not have mind that is that open to accept this mediocre tune. It resembles some Eurovision stuff that I can not comprehend. Songs like Pariah, Refuge and Song of Unborn are standing out in a good way. With direct intrusion of the title track and powerful vocal interpretation in Pariah, the album starts promising. The Same Asylum as Before is on a trace of Justin Timberlake and that's when things start going downward. Blank Tapes comes off as a filler, while quasi epic Detonation brings shamefully less music in comparison to some of his earlier epic stuff such as The Holy Drinker and Ancestral. Still, catchy rhythm leaves a lot of space for improv, so I am sure Detonation is going to be explosive live. Worth of mentioning is experimental Song of I that lures with its darkness and maintains a substantial level of uncertainty. Closing track Song Of Unborn successfully closes this unfortunate record.
We get used to everything, but does that mean that we are supposed to? To The Bone is maybe just a necessary step on Steven's genius path. We'll see.
