Steven Wilson’s cinematic concept album The Overview is named for the cognitive shift required of astronauts and others who’ve observed Earth from space and been humbled by both its beauty and its – and their – inconsequentiality. Wilson’s grappling with the existential questions raised by what he calls “cosmic vertigo” evidently inspired him musically.
The eighth solo record by the Porcupine Tree frontman consists of two infectiously melodic tracks, “Objects Outlive Us” (23 minutes) and “The Overview” (18 minutes). Each is comprised of sub-tracks that give the LP a stop-start quality, but they coalesce after a few listens as Wilson’s narrative unfolds.
“Objects Outlive Us” begins with “No Monkey’s Paw”, Wilson’s piercing falsetto introducing a rueful chance encounter on a moor between a human and a forgotten alien. Sung by Wilson in an incantatory style,“Buddha of the Modern Age”’ is a scathing depersonalized commentary of humanity’s greed, inhumanity, and self-destructive inertia. The poppier “Objects: Meanwhile” contrasts the quotidian problems of struggling English folk (in Swindon, presumably, since the song’s lyrics were contributed by XTC’s Andy Partridge) with epochal events that are occurring or will occur in the universe.
The instrumental “The Cicerones”, featuring plaintive Steve Hackett-style picking, offers respite, before Wilson ups the ante on “Ark”, which echoes the incantatory flow of “Buddha” as he chillingly summarises the inevitable destruction of Earth and the escape of the Few into space’s infinite star-studded nowhere. Randy McStine, who shares guitar duties with Wilson, closes the number with a crazed zig-zagging solo that should please prog-metal fans. The side ends with another instrumental,“The Heat Death of the Universe", Theo Travis’s mournful King Crimson-ish sax squall ending time as we know it.
There are no little people like us going about their business in Swindon on side two, which is sonically closer than side one to Wilson's 2023 The Harmony Codex. On “Perspective”, an astronaut’s staticky voice momentarily recalls Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine” before a Kubrickian tone is struck: over a jaunty electronic pulse, Wilson’s wife Rotem icily reports in a HAL-like voice the survivor ship’s increasing distances from the dust that was Earth, and the galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters that are passed like so many railway stations.
Fatalistically sung by Wilson, “A Beautiful Infinity I” is slow scudding rock interrupted by a bellyaching guitar. The number bleeds into the album’s most cohesive and anthemic sequence over the next four songs, Rotem’s intonations recurring and bursts of electric riffing, squirrely synth sounds from keyboardist Adam Holzman, and acoustic playing that permit a clap-along (even danceable) section. “Preserved/All we were/All destroyed/Drifting on/Through the void/As all permanence of matter disappears,” Wilson resignedly sings before a muted wailing sax puts mankind out of its misery.
This is philosophical space rock for adults, a sumptuous soundtrack for the unthinkable future that implicitly asks “What can we do to avoid it?” Its gorgeousness is a salve, though reading Henry Gee’s book “The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire” simultaneously isn’t recommended.
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