UP THE DOWNSTAIR

PT's second effort is much different than the wonderful and bizarre debut album, "On The Sunday Of Life", especially because it's the first Porcupine Tree debut album as a band, while in the previous album the name was only referred to Wilson's one man band. Up the Downstair is the first of many psych albums that PT would eventually create, such as Signify, Stupid Dream, and The Sky Moves Sideways.

The album starts with an interesting intro, followed by the song "Anesthesia", where the band makes a lot of use of electronic music and some ambient and new wave influences, however keeping the track very hearable, enlivened and catchy Brilliant.

"Always Never" uses the same formula as "Anesthesia", even though it's a generally mellow song, but very surprisingly dreamy and floating, with a strong influence of some famous Pink Floyd songs.

the title track is a long an instrumental song, with a guitar riff that appears suddenly, surrounded by hazy and psychedelic atmospheres with large use of synths and such. Being a very long song, it makes the structure of the album very solid and more consistent, since many songs aren't that long.

"Not beautiful anymore" is another interesting instrumental piece, with the typical atmospheres used many times in this album. "Small Fish" finally features vocals, even though the idea of having a pretty big lack of vocals part in the middle of the album was fantastic in my opinion, so SW's voice is believed as almost occasional, but when the moment comes, it feels like it's an unbelievable experience.

"Burning Sky" is very similar to the title track, even though it's much more enlivened and more down-to-ground. It has in fact more guitar riffs that fit perfectly in every part.

"Fadeaway" is a beautiful song, very powerful and cacthy, almost sounds like a melancholic goodbye to us listeners. In other words, a perfect closer.

A great album, which deserves the high esteem that it proudly has, a true hymn to psych prog and romantic melodies mixed together. An excellent addiction to any prog rock collection.