THE OVERVIEW

This album completely subverted my expectations. Firstly, given the subject and the 'spaciness' of the concept, I expected an instrumental album that had strong elements of space-rock and psychedelia, but much of 'objects outlive us' has strong vocals, especially Steven's trademark falsetto (I'm not sure if that's a great idea).

The music is disjointed and underwhelming. There are some short, interesting instrumental bits, but the album doesn't flow as a whole. Given the space theme, a lot of the textures on 'The Overview' are disarmingly acoustic and rustic, a bit like Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield, which brings things back down to earth. Steven's wife narrates some boring astronomical facts about the sizes of stars, nebulae and whatnot, (twice!) but why? It doesn't add anything to the music and is slightly annoying, especially when repeated. Steven seems keen on adding narration over the top of his music, but it's never really worked, except on 'Perfect Life' from 'Hand Cannot Erase'.

Steven's usual brilliant collaborators are here on keyboards and drums, (Adam and Craig) with the addition of Randy Stine, who plays a very long guitar solo at the end of 'Objects outlive us'. I listened to an interview with Steven on the making of the album, and he said that Randy and he were excited to process the sound of the guitar so that it wouldn't be like 'comfortably numb' - the guitar sounds they have used are, to my ears, unpleasant. The aforementioned guitar solo sounds like a bee farting through a distortion pedal! The processing of the guitars used elsewhere is just as irritating.

Other reviewers have remarked that, as you would expect from Steven, the album is excellently produced, but I found many of the timbres and sound choices underwhelming or bizarre.

All in all, it's a very curious album indeed and somewhat of a disappointment. I listened to Steven's last album 'The Harmony Codex' just once, and had no desire to listen to it again as I felt there wasn't anything appealing to revisit - I also feel the same about this one.

I have to say that Steven's work, for me, peaked with 'The Raven that Refused to Sing' and 'Hand Cannot Erase' and although I enjoyed 'To the Bone', it has been going downhill ever since.

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