FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET

Porcupine Tree's maturity reaches one of its high points with "Fear of a Blank Planet", their ninth album. Guided by Steven Wilson, the band's blend to produce a work that has moments of instrumental brilliance and also a vehicle to express themselves regarding youth issues in times when nothing is beyond the reach of a click, is remarkable.

Inspired by Brett Easton Ellis' novel, "You Do an Awfully Good Impression of Yourself", the album unfolds narratively from the point of view of the hopeless teenager "Robby" in Wilson's voice, with a depressive and intimate vision of his life and the refuge in external agents to cope with it. From the opening "Fear of a Blank Planet", a dark and powerful melody that starkly describes the character's perception of reality, Wilson's distorted guitars find in Colin Edwin Edwin's bass the ideal partner to accompany him, and has in the desolation of the melancholic and orchestrated "My Ashes" a pause sustained in good measure by Richard Barbieri's keyboards and a distant nod to the watery sound of Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter", exposing once again the teenager's disenchantment with his life and family environment.

And it's with the superb "Anesthetize", a suite divided into three segments, that Porcupine Tree shows one of the highest points of brilliance, from Gavin Harrison's incisive percussion, the full band builds step by step a dramatic and forceful scenography, with Wilson's crushing guitar riffs and Barbieri's angsty and lysergic keyboards, until its final section, sheltering in its theme once again the wandering and lost "Robby". Alex Lifeson chipped in with a fine guitar solo and John Wesley backed Wilson on the choruses.

The mood, from there on in, maintains that reflective, aching feel, with the minimalist piano of the clinging "Sentimental" and the heartbreaking, escapist "Way Out of Here". The dark, electronic psychedelia of "Sleep Together" brings the album to a close, as well as the tribulations of the teenager, cornered into making a potentially fatal decision about his future.

"Fear of a Blank Planet" is not only one of Porcupine Tree's best albums, but also one of the best of the entire genre in the 2000s.

Excellent.

4.5 stars