::sigh::
Ok.
Steven Wilson needs to stop. Put the flute down.
There. I said it. And this is where I lose possibly all but one of my readers.
Wilson is riding the 3rd wave prog thing all the way to the shore and scraping up the bottom of his board on the rocky shore when he should have bailed when the wave was giving out. Granted, the man is an audio genius. It pains me to talk smack on one of my old favorites and long-lasting musical obsessions, but he finally lost me. Actually, I was done with him when he released The Incident back in 2009 or what the fuck every it was I don't even care. I want to see him go back and spend some time with his side projects like Bass Communion or doing another album akin to Unreleased Electronic Music (who knew the modern prog god has such an ear for dubby breaky stuff?).
The Raven That Refused to Sing is 90% rehashed cud with a single, solitary track that would be more at home on one of his older, more predatory album like In Absentia. Not surprisingly, that song is the single, the one that got a video and got everyone all bonered up for the lackluster album. Lackluster isn't even the word for it. And you know what? I was just looking for the video of it on youtube and discovered that the song in question, Index, is not even ON this mess. It's off his PREVIOUS travesty of self-indulgence, Grace For Drowning. Therefore The Raven has no redeeming features whatsoever. Well, alright. Except the super cool bass on Luminol (I was really hoping this would be a Tad cover) and The Holy Drinker has a lot of good jazz freakouts, which I'm always down for. In fact, it's probably as close to a full good song on the album as I'm going to get. The vocals on The Pin Drop are kinda of toeing some new territory for him stylistically, which doesn't say that much because he has always had a limited vocal capacity. I'm sure the production is stellar, but good production doesn't cut it when it's been worked on crap. And can you believe it, this dried up turd won him a Prog album of the year award? Must have been a slow year.
I would rather listen to Devin Townsend's Epicloud album, which I also absolutely hated for it's overproduced Protools circle-jerk bubblegun pop reworking of his last 4 albums. Which were also rather spotty, but I generally liked them alright.
Man, I'm just on a roll here. I can either keep going with this negative tirade that I know many people have been too afraid to speak lest their prog card be revoked, or I can keep this freight train of hate chugging along. I'm tired. I think I'll call it a day on this one. Save your money, folks. Don't buy this drivel. Perhaps you ought to give it a listen to just form your own opinions. Say what you will about mine, but I'm stickin' to it.I would rather listen to Devin Townsend's Epicloud album, which I also absolutely hated for it's overproduced Protools circle-jerk bubblegun pop reworking of his last 4 albums. Which were also rather spotty, but I generally liked them alright.
That said, I will never rule out the possibility of an album by an artist who's music I have a good relationship with creeping up on me in the future. It's entirely possible that I'm a fucking pleb who just doesn't get it. If that's the case, I'm an adamant and outspoken pleb. If you wanna spin some Wilson, go back for Signify or Stupid Dream.
