GET ALL YOU DESERVE

Steven Wilson is recently (as of March 2013) fond of saying he has assembled the best band around: you see, he's got Nick Beggs, Marco Minnemann and Theo Travis in it, session musicians who are very respected and excellent in their respective instruments - indeed this is a fact, but he doesn't have the slightest idea of how to use his hiredmen to his advantage, mainly because the fame of his derives not from his supposed talent but from the bravado he uses to articulate phrases such as those.

Get All You Deserve is Wilson's newest addition to the "prog rock revivor" myth he sells and a lot of others do buy. I mean, if you analise the history of his heroes it makes sense for him to do an emulation, as he has been doing since Porcupine Tree started: Jethro Tull broke new ground doing the tours to TAAB and APP; so did Genesis with SEBTP, TLLDOB and ATTOT; or Pink Floyd since 1969; King Crimson didn't, but the tours between 1972-74 were scary to watch; the same for Van der Graaf Generator; and so forth. "It is a MUST", I can picture SW saying, "I must hit the road with a show containing theatrical elements, backdrops and impressive lightning". He did and now it is being sold...

I suppose it doesn't make a difference if SW has the best band possible, because he CANNOT use the members' skills in any way, let alone to play memorable and/or original music. From the "Citadel" intro to the "Litany" outro, all that happens musically is the mash-up of influences his fans love so much, going through all his "prog rock exponent" works as a solo artist and a little more, after a while, I cannot even tell one song from the other, except that they haven't a thing to say, of course.

Even visually it falters: Nick Beggs is bizarre enough to be a relief, but the rest... The usual "new-prog" concert fare notwithstanding, it is stale, not only because it is so clear a rip-off but because Wilson tries so hard to show how a great showman he (thinks he) is it is painful, maybe he should be in a Beach Boys cover band because he would make a good Mike Love impersonator.

Get All You Deserve still gains two stars from me because I paid for it and because, well, he tried. And failed again. Steven isn't worried though, not since he is hailed as a "genius artist who inserts new life into an old art", but I must confess I am, I always am when such simple but bold words are taken as received wisdom instead of opinion subject to critical thinking - just like The Beatles, a band which i dislike just as much and whose music has much more to do with Wilson's than the ones he's trying to reach.