“There was no ghost on the moor/No open window/No monkey paw/And there you asked me “Did you forget I exist?”/ I said, “Yes, but you played too hard to get”. The opening lines for the eerie introduction of meeting this extra-terrestrial on the moor for ‘Objects Outlive Us’ sets up this mystery, the surrealism, and the voyage of floating into space in Steven Wilson’s eighth studio album The Overview.
It’s a return to form for Wilson to come back into the prog genre following the albums he had carried, years ago; The Raven That Refused to Sing, Grace For Drowning, Hand.Cannot.Erase, and The Harmony Codex. The genesis behind his latest album is about the “overview effect” where astronauts look back at their home planet from space.
Two tracks clocking in at 23 and 18 minutes, you won’t find a single version on here. Wilson delivers the mighty and powerful structures behind his new album. He told Dave Everley in issue 157 of PROG Magazine, “People who like more progressive, more conceptual rock music, they’re much more open-minded than they perhaps they even might give themselves credit for sometimes”.
And that’s what The Overview is, an imaginative movie inside your head, the ultimate headphones album. And to be allowed to have Andy Partridge from XTC, who had written lyrics for Steven on ‘To The Bone’ and the single ‘How Big the Space’ which was released on Record Store Day in 2018, returning back to lend Steven a helping hand, not just the remixes of the XTC catalog Wilson has done, but on ‘Objects: Meanwhile.’ Both of them knew it was a challenge to go back once more, beyond the infinite worlds that’s about to unfold.
With a little help from Randy McStine, Adam Holzman, Rotem Wilson, Theo Travis, Craig Blundell, Niko Tsonev, Nick Beggs and his daughter Willow who are aboard Steven’s spaceship, preparing to hurtle through the cosmos, they know they need to get the job completed, top to bottom. If you think Steven’s going for the Star Wars realm, then this ain’t your album.
When ‘Objects Outlive Us’ starts as I’ve mentioned earlier, you are embarking on this surreal journey that you feel as if you’re in a dream. ‘The Buddha of the Modern Age’ is a spiritual loss of innocence. The moment we open our mouths and say some crazy-ass shit, we know the intense pounding that people are going to get. And it isn’t going to be pretty.
Adam’s organ-driven rise and mellotron choir, sets up the fire that surrounds the piece as it delves into this passageway of finding your true self before segueing into this mournful waltz of Partridge’s lyrical textures on ‘Objects: Meanwhile’ “Her shopping bag broke sending eggs and flour crashing / Down to the ground, just like star clusters smashing / But no one will give her a glance / They just shuffle on home in a trance”.
It deals with what people do in the modern world, whether its shopping, a car being stolen, beginning a new job, the Bowie-nod question “Is there Life on Mars?”, the beauty acoustic-driven and spaced-out classical textures, hits your heart with a mighty tug. Once Steven pumps in that Bass, all bets are off.
It is time to go hyper-speed on this mo-fo. It then takes a soft relax into the abyss by going into ‘The Cicerones’ then this chant-like mode for the ‘Ark’ to appear. You feel the temperature rising, you feel as if something’s about to erupt at any second as Russell Holzman, Adam’s son, gives the power to prove how far he’s come by making his dad proud.
The Overview isn’t just Steven’s album, it is a family coming together. It’s similar for what Steven had done by giving his stepdaughters a helping hand on saying the line “I am the universe!” on ‘Self’ from The Future Bites. Here, he wants to make sure everyone plays their part well and lend in some carte blanche vibes for the story that is about to unfold, right in front of the listener’s eyes.
McStine himself pours his heart on ‘Cosmic Sons of Toil.’ When he plays that solo, you know something wonderful is happening. The Holzman family, McStine, and Wilson, they are ready to go. But holy shit in a hand basket! Those riffs, those intensive riffs are out there, top to bottom! But it’s the droning ambient flutes that come into the forefront on ‘No Ghost on the Moor’.
It’s a reprise from the opening section as if the man returns to meet the alien once again and he asked him the same question once more on ‘No Ghost on the Moor’ before Randy and Steven land back to Earth to bring it all back home for a meditated guidance of the journey they embarked on for ‘Heat Death of the Universe’ which speaks of the final section of King Crimson’s 23-minute magnum opus ‘Lizard’ that sends you into the black hole, leaving listeners on this cliffhanger, not knowing when the story is going to continue.
Then, we get to the 18-minute title-track that closes out the story. We hear the sound of static, voices from NASA I believe, and then a trip-hopping effect as Rotem’s narration in the style of the HAL-9000 computer kicks in “Size beyond one megameter/10 to the power of 6/Ganymede/Callisto/Wolf 359”.
Steven’s drum programming, sound designs, and McStine’s help on this, makes it a message across space before walking into the world of Tangerine Dream’s time with the Virgin label that speaks of Rubycon and back into the ‘Perspective’ once again.
When you listen to ‘A Beautiful Infinity I’ you think of nods to Neil Young’s lyrical arrangements that Steven admires. There are some strong boundaries of Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Expecting to Fly’ with Jack Nitzche’s orchestral boundaries, followed by a mournful beauty and 10cc’s approach that kicks into overdrive.
Then, returning to the form on the second track once more with ‘Borrowed Atoms’ where you realise as you look across the stars in our solar system, asking if this real? Or was it all just a dream?
Once we head back into ‘A Beautiful Infinity II’ it goes into an Arena Rock mode for a brief moment, then sliding down and down into the unknown of an existential mystery, flowing through the space travelers. Steven really knows his source material when it comes to that track as he walks into Jeff Lynne’s orchestration from his Out of the Blue years from the Electric Light Orchestra.
When I hear ‘Infinity Measured in Moments’ I felt Rotem is returning to her narration from ‘The Harmony Codex’ as if Steven had added lyrics to the song with Randy leading the way for the adventure that’s coming to an end with Holzman’s moog, swirling back and forth in this hallucinated vibe.
Adam goes into this Jazz Fusion approach which shines brighter and brighter as the hand-clapping effects are telling him to keep pushing and pushing into massive light-speeds with 8-bit sound from the Nintendo Entertainment System. Just as everything comes to an end, ‘Permanence’ sees Steven and Theo returning to the one-hour meditation vibe they had worked on for the ‘Aeolus’ sessions as if extending the piece with a smoky-night club vibe in 1950s Paris.
It is a strong return for an album that’ll be talked about in the years to come. Whether you get it or you don’t, you have to appreciate the accomplishments for what he’s done. From Porcupine Tree, Solo Artist, co-hosting a podcast with Tim Bowness for The Album Years, Remixing classics, and going back into the prog genre once more. The Overview is one of those albums that I’ve mentioned earlier, a movie inside your head.
As this album approves more and more as the years go by, I’m hoping that he plans to make this album be played in Planetariums, delving into the magic that’s about to unfold. It’s sort of similar when I first heard Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon at the Planetarium when I was 12 years old in 1997, and my life changed forever. This album, is not only is to be shown just for the big screen on IMAX, but Planetariums for midnight showings.
