GRACE FOR DROWNING

Steven Wilson has decided in his solo career to take a different approach than with Porcupine Tree. Instead of trying to tight up the structures of the songs as much as possible, he decided to let the things happen during the recording process which give more improvisations and Jazz to the music. The list of musicians here is impressive and brings so much beautiful textures to the sound of this release. I think my overall feeling about this one hour and twenty minutes of music was about like watching a movie and going on a journey trough different moods and atmosphere, but mostly of the dark and melancholic side. The use of acoustic guitars, many gentle piano lines is sharing the parts with some heavier guitars which is nothing new when we know what the man did previously in his career. Not only the mix of Metal, Pop, Ambient and Prog is taking the listener to different moods but even in those dreamy slow tempo passages, we can always feel some intensity growing sometimes with a sax or clarinet solo which are abundant here. Sometimes like in the song "Index", we are waiting for a blast of guitars, but it never does, we are left with a cool melody, some ambient vibes driven by drums, keyboards and the vocals of Steven. For those older listeners here, the use of flute and clarinets of Theo Travis will remind you of the old King Crimson sound of the 70's, especially brilliant in the instrumental "Sectarian" and the epic "Raider II". The complexity of the arrangements here and the overall sound of each instruments are impressive. The sound of mellotron can be heard, while i can't say that they use a real old one, but i know that Steven has played on a real one. "Belle de Jour" has some affinity with "Entangled" of Genesis. Also one more thing to notice, it's the good use the choir in some songs with arrangements that have been done by Dave Stewart. There is too many highlights here to go any further , you have to get this, especially in surround sound to live the full experience of great songwriting and sound.