Steven Wilson - The Future Bites out today

First spin......This is pretty good. Impeccable sound quality, the synth bass shakes my bones. We'll see if future spins makes this album bite! 

The album has grown on me. I think it helped to try to ignore it’s relation to his previous works and listen without prog ears. It feels more rooted than To The Bone, which I felt went a bit in every direction and not really rooted anywhere. It’s got some great tracks, but the complete album is not quite there.

TFB is more complete and focused on his new sound. Of all the tracks, 12 Things I Forgot is my least favorite. It’s somewhat boring and easily confused with contemporary pop on the radio. The rest is a nice mix of sounds. I also like the 42 minute runtime.

Zeph wrote: The album has grown on me. I think it helped to try to ignore it’s relation to his previous works and listen without prog ears...

With some albums I have thought, how would I or others react to the music if they had no idea who made it? So in this case, not just turning off those Prog ears, but forgetting or not caring about who made it. Would you be hard on it if it was some unknown who came out with this music? Or would it be something that you would even bother with if it came from some unknown and give it a second spin (assuming you had received access to it).

I have yet to hear this album beyond material that was released before. I am hardly only interested in Prog, and not being a Steven Wilson fan, I wouldn't judge it against his other works.

Edited by Logan - February 12 2021 at 15:53

Cristi wrote: Logan wrote: I have yet to hear this album beyond material that was released before. I am hardly only interested in Prog, and not being a Steven Wilson fan, I wouldn't judge it against his other works. it's more or less an art-pop album, you might like it.

Haha, I was just looking at the "Top 3 albums per genre that's not prog" and wondering which three "art pop" albums I should choose? And literally just now looking through a list of top art pop albums (various of which are deemed Prog or Prog Related by this site's standards).

EDIT: Listening to KING GHOST now and I am enjoying it. It's very true, I do like loads of art pop and progressive pop (much of which crosses over into art rock and progressive rock). I liked what I've heard of The Raven that Refused to Sing, but I still haven't listened to a lot of his music.

Edited by Logan - February 12 2021 at 16:39

Having spun this album several times.....This is hardly a pop album, maybe in Steven's mind in that he wants to harken back to ABBA, XTC, Tears For Fears. There might be one song that I could imagine being played on the FM radio, where we might say a pop song would gain popularity.