THE OVERVIEW

Steven Wilson has described his new album, The Overview, as a return to longer-form writing. I'm not sure "return" is necessarily applicable here. Even To the Bone and The Future Bites had one song apiece that pushed 10 minutes. Though I suppose if he's talking more specifically about songs long enough to cover one whole side of an LP, it has been a while. The last one of such length was "Raider II" off Grace for Drowning in 2011. And this is the first album to feature two such massive songs since The Sky Moves Sideways (though disc one of The Incident is billed as one hour-long song cycle).

This is also the first Steven Wilson solo album in a while I've gone into with good hopes. He has explicitly cited Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd as influences he channeled here, as well as stating that the concept of The Overview is well-suited to progressive rock. (The concept behind this album is "the overview effect," where astronauts viewing the Earth from above often report overwhelming emotion and a strong connection with all of humanity.)

The first half of the album is the 23-minute, eight-part "Objects Outlive Us", which was co-written by Andy Partridge of XTC. Opening with some wispy, echoing falsetto vocals, things coalesce slowly, and the second part has a touch more urgency. Piano underpins a steady marching rhythm, and multilayered vocals add to the building tension. It grows louder and more oppressive before suddenly cutting out, seemingly evoking the growing weight of G-forces before arriving in a zero-gravity setting.

Pink Floyd is indeed a very obvious influence in this song, but it's all run through the filter of Wilson's songwriting style. Wilson has always drawn heavily from Floyd, and part three gives me strong echoes of Porcupine Tree circa the turn of the millennium. This phase then shifts into a heavier passage, and I really like the guitar tones here. The riffs are irregular and exciting.

Near the midpoint of "Objects Outlive Us", things quiet down, and piano and acoustic guitar again take the lead. As more textures enter, it lends the song a trancelike, hypnotic quality. Wilson again pulls off a powerful buildup before pulling back and letting blooping synth patterns push things along. There's a wiry, bluesy guitar solo that contrasts against the space-age retro-futurism of the backing in a really interesting way.

Heading into the final leg of this opus, Wilson revisits the subdued themes of this song's opening, underscoring the thesis laid out in this song's title: the persistence of things. A stretched-out guitar solo occupies most of this song's conclusion, gradually fading into an anxious swirl of effects.

The 18-minute, six-part title track comes next. Opening on radio static, it quickly shifts to bouncy electronica with outer-space words being narrated over top. Here are those Tangerine Dream influences he mentioned! This passage goes on for a bit longer than it needs to, but it's not too terribly dragged-out. The shifting textures beneath the narration do give this section some dynamism, and it does a good job at setting the tone. 

Part two starts as an acoustic song with a simple rhythm, and the Pink Floyd influences are again obvious, especially in the guitar flourishes. His vocal melodies are strong and catchy, and this is a good synthesis of his more pop-oriented writing with some of his prog influences. There is some nice twang here and there in the instrumental backing that I'm not sure I've ever heard from Wilson before. The mood is overall mellower and dreamier than on the prior epic. This piece takes its time a bit more, and that's a nice contrast between the two sides.

The opening narration reemerges, but this time the backing is more a blend of rock and electronic influences, rather than diverging into one or the other. After one last reprise of the preceding section's chorus, the song pushes into an ascendant, interstellar guitar solo.

There's an unexpected hard pivot to a rather sunny, bouncy section led by biting bass and punctuated by handclaps. Despite how different it is from the preceding passage, it fits in perfectly, and it serves as the backing for an exhilarating synthesizer solo. Delicate guitar and ukulele arpeggios evoke twinkling stars as things fade out.

"The Overview"'s final passage emerges from this void with gently wobbling electric piano and distant saxophone, calling to mind the emptiness of space. This resolution feels somewhat anticlimactic. Had, perhaps, this been shorter and flowed more immediately from the preceding passage, it may have worked better. But as it is, it simply lingers too long for my liking. That said, it's a fairly minor overall quibble.

It's nice to have Steven Wilson making music I like again. Where The Harmony Codex saw him bridging his electronic and rock influences, The Overview is where he has jumped fully back into prog. Who knows how long he'll stay there, but I'm enjoying it while I can. The two huge tracks here are both smart and striking, with distinct personalities. I've got minor gripes with each, but on the whole, this is quite the strong release.

Review originally published here: theeliteextremophile.com/2025/03/17/album-review-steven-wilson-the-overview/

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