THE INCIDENT

Edit: Ignore the following review. The album is much better than I gave it credit for and I need to rewrite this. Ironically, this album grew on me while I lost most of my appreciation for Insurgentes. I've raised this rating to 4 and reduced Insurgentes to 3.

At the end of the day, The Incident simply feels like a great recipe that was unfinished, undercooked, choose your cliché. My honest opinion is that most artists require a certain amount of time to prepare each feast, and in this case Wilson used most of his kitchen magic in preparation of the exquisite "Insurgentes." That album struck me as a great progression for Wilson as an artist and a very satisfying experience for the listener. The Incident, while chalk full of promising bits and pieces never comes together as a great album. It feels lost, it meanders, it tries everything in the tackle box but the fish aren't biting. The intent may very well have been to make a "looser" album as a change from the clearly well structured FoaBP, he may have been trying to force the listener to accept something less defined. Sometimes albums like that can be a real adventure but in the case of The Incident it just didn't happen.

There are some really fantastic individual tracks here that jump the rating to an immediate "good-3" for me but that's as far as it goes. "Octane twisted" is a good track with the gentle Steven intro just launching into ferocious rock, the kind of real punch I wish Rush were still capable of. Songs like "The blind house" and "Time flies" in particular have this middle-aged angsty melody that Wilson is every bit as capable of tapping as he is teen angst on earlier work. I know exactly the feelings he is lamenting in a "suburb of heaven" that "seemed to make so much sense." I shared the same time and place, and the speed with which life passes becomes painfully clear to anyone past 30. While the lyrical concepts of the album are loftier than that of course, what is important to me is the emotional connection which come in fits and spurts throughout this album. Yet unlike "The Wall" where the minor pieces and connecting tissue always felt as wonderful as the meatier tracks, those pieces here feel more or less like outtake PT riffing and drifting. Harsh perhaps, but after so many plays it never feels as complete or as special as Insurgentes, In Absentia, or even FoaBP. It feels like something that would have succeeded much more as an EP, with the best material streamlined into 28 minutes.

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