Steven Wilson: “I’ve tried to reinvent the classic rock guitar solo”
Steven Wilson has spoken to NME about how he’s attempted to reinvent guitar solos as part of his new space-themed album ‘The Overview’, which marks the Porcupine Tree musician’s return to prog-rock after more than a decade.
Announced last month and set for March release, ‘The Overview’ is named after The Overview Effect – the unsettling phenomenon experienced by astronauts when they view Earth from outer space for the first time.
“Astronauts experience a profound epiphany,” Wilson told NME. “Some people have a very positive reaction, but some have reactions that are very negative. I think it’s quite positive to acknowledge that life is a random, freak gift, that you should enjoy the ride. As far as the universe is concerned, it doesn’t care about your life.”
On learning of The Overview Effect from his friend Alex Milas of research body Space Rocks, Wilson was immediately inspired to write two lengthy pieces; the title track and ‘Objects Outlive Us’.
The album is accompanied by an animated film directed by Miles Skarin, who regularly works with Wilson on his videos, as well as his first solo tour for seven years. “It doesn’t seem like a tour was that long ago,” admitted Wilson. “It’s exciting to do it again after so long, but also a bit scary.”
‘Objects Outlive Us’ features an epic guitar solo by Randy McStine, the touring guitarist with the reformed Porcupine Tree. Wilson’s acclaimed trio reunited in 2022 for a tour and their first album for 13 years, ‘Closure/Continuation’.
“I said to Randy: ‘We’re going to reinvent the notion of the extended classic rock solo’,” Wilson explained. “I told Randy: ‘This is going to be the not ‘Comfortably Numb’ solo,” he continued, referring to Pink Floyd’s 1979 classic from ‘The Wall’. “I wanted something with the same feeling of drama, but which is a million light years away from it. What Randy did is one of the highlights of the record.”
Other contributors to ‘The Overview’ include XTC singer Andy Partridge, who wrote lyrics for ‘Objects Outlive Us’, and Wilson’s wife Rotem, who recites facts about Earth’s distances from other planets and galaxies on the title track.
Read on for NME’s full interview with Wilson, who also revealed Porcupine Tree’s progress on new music, and why Wilson wanted to tell the reality of his supposed hatred of Coldplay…
NME: Hi, Steven. What was so exciting about The Overview Effect when you first learned about it?
Steven Wilson: “People’s reactions to it depend on the belief system and agenda of the person experiencing it. That idea fascinated me, and I read a lot about the reactions of everyone from astronauts to others who have been in space, like Jeff Bezos and William Shatner.”
Wasn’t Shatner’s response totally negative when he went into space in 2021?
“It was. He said something like: ‘All I saw was death and emptiness,’ which is fascinating from Captain Kirk. I could have easily called this album ‘Perspective’, because that’s what The Overview Effect boils down to: reminding people just how insignificant and meaningless we are in relation to the universe.
“This was a rare occasion where I’ve had the title and concept for an album before writing a single lyric or note of music.”
Why did the concept lend itself to two long songs of roughly 20 minutes each?
“It intuitively felt like something long-form, analogous to a novel or a film. It’s the idea of starting on Earth, ending up on the other side of the universe. That journey should be contained within a single continuum of music. To continue the cinema analogy, the two tracks do break down into scenes, but ultimately ‘The Overview’ is one musical journey.”
The fact it’s two long pieces seems to mark your return to prog, 11 years after ‘The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories)’. Is that fair?
“Sure. It’s not a nostalgic sounding record, but I hold my hands up and say it’s an old-fashioned piece of conceptual rock, in the tradition of ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ and ‘Tubular Bells’. That’s a constant throughout my career. But this record, because it’s a concept of two long pieces, plays even more into a progressive rock trope.”
You’ve been ambivalent about being seen as a prog musician in recent years, and made albums that have veered away from that tag. Did you have any concerns about ‘going prog’ again?
“I was very aware some fans would love ‘The Overview’ as an idea. I was more worried about how my record company, management and the media would take it.
“In all respects, I’ve been proved wrong. It seems the timing is good for this record, that the time is right for progressive ideals to be reappraised. I’d never have expected that this would be the album the British media would be excited about, but they seem to be. It goes to show all the old rules don’t apply anymore. No one cares about genre, it’s about whether the music distinguishes itself and has something unique about it. That’s how it rises out of the mass now.”
The title track is an electronica banger, rather than traditional prog…
“The first section of it is something Autechre might have done. I don’t try to filter my musical personality. There are a lot of things going on, which is almost what makes it a Steven Wilson record: it flips from ’90s electronica to ’70s prog to ambient to classic singer-songwriter to a metal riff. That’s now what people recognise as my style.”
Why did you do the film with Miles Skarin alongside the album?
“I’d normally commission videos for four singles. That’s irrelevant for ‘The Overview’, so why not take all that money and instead commission one filmmaker to make one 42-minute pop video?
“Miles and I talked about the first scene, of an alien crawling out of a pond on a moor to ask: ‘Did you forget about me?’ There are some strong clues for visuals in the lyrics, and Miles did more scientific research than me, into the visual representations of facts about the universe in the title track.
“The challenge was creating visuals that haven’t been seen a million times before. We’ve all seen Interstellar, 2001, millions of clips from Nasa. How can we find a fresh way to represent that? I think Miles has achieved that.”
Your previous record ‘The Harmony Codex’ was mostly written before Porcupine Tree reformed. Has that reunion fed into ‘The Overview’?
“My solo career has influenced Porcupine Tree, more than the other way round. In the first version of the band, I wrote most of the material. It was more of a dictatorship. For the band to come back, it made sense for it to be more collaborative and democratic. I couldn’t have done that if my solo career wasn’t established. It’s liberating. I feel very relaxed now in deferring and – in the best sense – compromising with the other guys.
“That’s a great position to be in, as I have a solo career where I control everything and now also a band that’s a democratic unit. It’s fun to be in a band, a gang.”
Does that mean there will be more new Porcupine Tree music?
“We’ve already got a couple of songs. We’re not promising anyone that we’ll make a new record, but I suspect we probably will end up moving towards a new record. We’re having fun making new music, and slowly but surely that will evolve into something else.”
Last July, you wrote on Instagram about the infamous meme of you holding up a sing reading “Coldplay are wankers”. Why was the time right to do that? Is it because Coldplay’s recent music like ‘Music Of The Spheres’ ties in with the themes of ‘The Overview’?
“No, but now you mention it, there is a lot of serendipity there. The truth is, I was scrolling through the photos on my phone and saw that picture. I thought: ‘Oh! I remember that!’
“It was great to set the record straight. Somebody gave me that sign, and somebody else took a picture at that exact moment. It meant I got this reputation for hating Coldplay, when I quite like them. In reality, I was going: ‘Why have you given me this sign?’ That Instagram post was fun. And you’re right, a Coldplay song like ‘Coloratura’ is very much in the same lyrical and musical world as this new record.”
You’ve also done a lot of spatial audio mixes of classic albums. Where could spatial audio go next, to make it even more immersive?
“Atmos sound has nothing below you, and you could have speakers underneath. But the big innovation won’t necessarily be in expanding spatial. I think it’s how to bring it into a live context. Right now, it’s tricky, as you need a week to acoustically calibrate and tune it, and that’s not practical when you play a new city every night. But it’s interesting to see more venues having spatial audio already installed, like The Sphere in Las Vegas.”
“If more venues do that, it gives artists chance to tour a more immersive show. I hope that will be a big progress over the next few years.”
Speaking of the live side, what are your plans for touring ‘The Overview’?
“It’s going to be mind-blowing to perform it with an audience. It’s going to be an epic, and you have to think in those terms of grand gestures, because everyone wants an event now. An event can be an anniversary show, but it needs to be something that’s less vanilla than a rock band showing up onstage to play a set. The moment people walk through the door of the venue, I’ve got them. And I’m trying to think of how to event-ise these shows.”
‘The Overview’ is released on March 14 by Fiction. The accompanying film premieres at London’s IMAX on February 25, before Wilson embarks on a full European, UK and North American tour. Visit here for tickets and more information.
MAY
1 – Cirkus, Stockholm
2 – Konserthaus, Oslo
4 – KB Hallen, Copenhagen
6 – Mitsubishi Electric Halle, Dusseldorf
7 – Cirque Royale, Brussels
9 – Symphony Hall, Birmingham
10 – Beacon, Bristol
12-13, 19-20 – Palladium, London
15 – O2 City Hall, Newcastle
16 – Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
18 – Lowry, Manchester
22 – AFAS Live, Amsterdam
24-26 – Salle Playel, Paris
28-29 – Bourse Du Travail, Lyon
30 – Porsche Arena, Stuttgart
31 – Zenith, Munich
JUNE
2 – Friedrichspalast, Berlin
3 – Sporthalle, Hamburg
4 – COS Torwar Arena, Warsaw
5 – Prezero, Gliwice
7 – Teatro Degli Archimboldi, Milan
8 – Auditorium Parco Della Musica, Rome
10 – The Hall, Zurich
11 – Cepac Silo, Marseille
12 – Para-Lel 62, Barcelona
13 – Sala La Riviera, Madrid
SEPTEMBER
9 Masonic, San Francisco
10 Wiltern, Los Angeles
11 Magnolia, El Cajon
12 Van Buren, Phoenix
14 Paramount Theater, Denver
16 Orpheum Theater, Minneapolis
17 Auditorium Theater, Chicago
19 Fillmore, Detroit
20 MGM Park, Northfield
22 Danforth Music Hall, Toronto
25 MTELUS, Montreal
27 Theatre Capitole, Quebec
29 Shubert Theater, Boston
30 Capitol Theater, Port Chester
OCTOBER
2 Brooklyn Paramount Theater, New York
4-5 Fillmore, Philadelphia
7 Warner Theater, Washington
9 Tabernacle, Atlanta
11 Majestic Theater, Dallas
13 Auditorio Telmex, Guadalajara
14 Pepsi Center WTC, Mexico City
17 Tokio Marine Hall, Sao Paulo
19 Movistar Arena, Santiago
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John Earls
NME
