It must be tough being the front man of a highly innovative rock band these days. Thom Yorke, Radiohead’s melancholic lead singer, felt its toll in 2006, and needed nine songs’ worth of depressing electro-glitchpop on an album called “The Eraser” to exorcise those demons even his bandmates couldn’t understand. He set a critically acclaimed precedent then for Steven Wilson, the slightly less brooding singer, songwriter and producer of Porcupine Tree. Wilson took time off from his extensive list of projects during the last two years to make “Insurgentes,” his solo debut.
But while Yorke’s album felt like a tangential midlife crisis, “Insurgentes” is a thoughtful and intelligent creation reinforcing Wilson’s reputation as one of the most meticulous artists most people have never heard of. This is not a collection of leftover songs he couldn’t fit into his other albums; it is a cohesive, fascinating evolution of his career that fully justifies its existence as a separate musical entity.
Porcupine Tree has been funneled into the progressive rock category since the Floydian space epics of its early albums, but its connections to the likes of Yes and Rush have more to do with Wilson’s immaculate production and attention to detail than the tradition of instrumental virtuosity carried out more faithfully by bands such as Dream Theater and The Mars Volta. Wilson doesn’t subscribe to the dogma of “prog.” He just dabbles in the genre’s indulgent practices from time to time, as on “Anesthetize,” the multipart suite from Porcupine Tree’s most recent album. For the most part, his music is progressive the way Radiohead’s is, marked more by creativity and artistry than by degree of difficulty.
“Insurgentes” is not a radical departure from the Porcupine Tree sound, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering Wilson’s dominant role in the group. He also wisely stuck with drummer Gavin Harrison, an endlessly talented musician who has contributed his invaluable skill to the band’s last three albums. In fact, what is most intriguing about “Insurgentes” is the extent to which it doesn’t sound like a Porcupine Tree album, despite the presence of the two most distinctive members.
The most obvious distinction is a steady injection of shoegaze into the mix. The layers of rich distortion add another dimension to Wilson’s dense, atmospheric melodies, somehow making the album feel more assertive yet still meditative. Two songs stretch beyond the eight-minute mark, exploiting instrumental drones and sliding muscular themes in and out of the foreground. The longer of the two, “No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun,” showcases Harrison’s formidable skills without sounding overly complicated, despite a title taken from the King Crimson playbook.
Most of the songs on “Insurgentes” prioritize mood over accessibility, but Wilson lets his pop sensibilities shine through on a few occasions. The opener, “Harmony Korine,” starts off sounding oddly like the kind of song that usually closes his albums, with grand sensationalist lyrics about rain falling forever, until a chugging chorus grabs the song by its ears and tugs it right off the ground.
It takes six more songs before another serious hook appears: “Only Child” borrows the bitterness of Porcupine Tree’s tuneful 1999 album, “Stupid Dream,” but channels it into a song that is both more focused and more fully realized. The catchiness is a welcome gift, because it takes some time to unpack the album’s less explicit rewards.
But it’s worth sticking around to find them. The ultimate highlight, “Significant Other,” constructs a euphoric wordless chorus out of the soaring voice of Irish singer Clodagh Simonds and a wall of fuzzed-out guitars so thick it suggests Phil Spector producing My Bloody Valentine.
Add in the album’s countless gorgeous details and the tension between Wilson’s warm voice and cynical lyrics, all wrapped in his truly spectacular production, and “Insurgentes” measures up to be the perfect realization of a uniquely brilliant vision.
Fans of Steven Wilson have come to expect this level of excellence. He approaches all of his projects like a master craftsman, from his long career with Porcupine Tree to his production of the Swedish progressive death metal band Opeth. What is even more impressive about “Insurgentes” is that it represents the pursuit of ambitious artistic growth by a man whose career already seems boundless.
E-mail Goodman at agoodman@media.ucla.edu.