Steven Wilson - The Overview Album Review
Steven Wilson
The Overview / ST5V5N W9LS15N – TH5 OV5RV95W
Out Now on Fiction Records
Album Review
Oh! How we needed Punk Rock! The turgidity and suffocation of the hippy dominated long-haired Prog Rock amblings suffocated like a winter duvet on a warm spring morning. The singles market was thriving with cut and paste emotions, smash and grab lyrics and the briefest of brief guitar solos and breaks. Everything under three minutes for a quid, with a quirky B-side thrown in, (sometimes a proper gem).
Survivors from this edgy, musical tidal shift hold onto the mantra “Don’t bore us, get us to the chorus!” Elder siblings, or the long-hairs of the upper school were boring. Parties full of dope smoking lay-abouts listening to albums were tedious. The older kids could get about in fifth-hand motors bought for £50, carrying a prized album to play, when we were looking for the punch of Glam Rock. I recall a house party where an elder brother of the party girl insisted that we all listen to this “amazing album” by Pink Floyd. Yes, it was great and vaargh! you could hear some swearing in a track about an asylum, but we wanted Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting, and the Wam Bam! Thank you, Mam of Suffragette City, not this dull stuff.
The first hit of Punk was found at an anarchic house party a couple of years or so later. Again, an older bloke had control of the record player needle and instead of having to listen reverentially to atmospheric burblings and multitrack sound-washes, we were free to jump around and chorus Neat! Neat! Neat! from the vinyl-crystallised adrenalin of the fine first Damned album. But you can’t keep pogoing all your life and as Steven Wilson had witnessed too, that excitement wasn’t the only good music going. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon, (the one played at that earlier party) dealing with mental health and sickening wealth was a fascinating album when the parties were over. This was before Floyd wrote inward looking songs about being big in the music biz (Wish You Were Here), or the Orwellian protest politico observations of Animals, or anti-educationalists in The Wall. Floyd seemed to have become trapped in the idea of the big idea concept albums at a time when money was no object and their connections with the everyday world were stretched to incredulous. They had arrived at an exceptionally privileged place.
The end of Prog Rock’s golden era coincided with the emergence of rough as a dog, play live, home recorded bands. Was it the Membranes who didn’t know how to tune a guitar, so just lined up all the tuning pegs and played chord shapes? (Was it you, John Robb?).
What characterised a prog rock album sleeve was the immense array of instruments and electronic machinery that had been assembled in order to create the sound. Clearly every last button, knob, slider from the listed techno-wizardry was essential to the final vinyl, but would a listener get it all? Like a complex piece of full orchestra Romantic Classical musical music, it would take many plays to fully enjoy, each play bringing a new variation and appreciation to the listener’s consciousness, making the recording timeless. Is this what Steven Wilson is doing in TH5 OV5RV95W? The list of instruments and machinery used for his latest release, recorded in late 2024, is as extensive as those laid down in the 1970s.
This album definitely grew on me. It is traditional album length. It has an A-side of 23’17” and a B-Side of 18’21”. I paused the CD and then went back for the second side after a cuppa, just like when a vinyl album needs to be turned over.
Concentration levels extend as we grow up, but teachers are told that peak focus can be generally maintained for about 40 minutes. Albums running at roughly this length are certainly easier to absorb and appreciate. Wilson’s new work is far closer to the high density Yes album, Relayer, rather than the overloaded Tales From Topographic Oceans.
The two sides of this album have eight and six tracks respectively. The tracks run together in a way Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here albums do. This may not be original, but it is very good.
W9LS15N’s new album is so very clever. The echoes of his formative musical influences abound. Side One is Yes. The lead guitar might be Steve Howe’s work. The use of keyboards mellotron, modular synth and Rhodes are very Rick Wakeman. The drumming of Russell Holzman has a feel of Bill Bruford about it. Certainly, the emphasis on first beats of bars and percussive shadowing of key phrases, gives similar shades to the tracks.
Side Two The Overview is Pink Floyd, with a touch of The Beatles. Extended guitar notes, tempo slower, reverbs and more natural singing tones (with flashes of falsetto) accompanied by acoustic guitar and piano are so reminiscent of peak Floyd, it is a little unsettling. The music is far too good to be anything other than a homage to his heroes. Wilson has applied himself to a renovation for his cosmic big idea concept album and it’s a great job.
Andy Partridge (formerly of XTC and a collaborator of Wilson from decades ago) wrote the lyrics to Objects: Meanwhile, which is a striking song. I was listening to The Beatles She’s Leaving Home last night and how this Partridge - Wilson track develops, again could be from our collective musical history, with its contemporaneous imagery and observations on mundane existences, just placed in a longer dimension…The nurse in care home now empties a bath tub / The water will spiral, a galaxy’s vast hub. This is not about the relatively local Earth satellite and its dark side, it is about the awe of realising the expanding Universe’s vastness.
With this interpretation, (wrong or right), I sense that Wilson has aimed to build on all that has gone before, using the Prog Rock technology of the early and mid-1970s to follow the wonder that came collectively at Apollo XI’s lunar landing. In his new album, Wilson is reflecting on today’s increasing knowledge of deep space. The distances are measurable, but unimaginable. They make our brief lives on this planet something less than specks, make our world a flash in the pan when seen against the enormity of everything. It is a truly neat concept for an album.
Steven Wilson ponders the Great Unknown
The fact is that what we see of space is the past. We can only see distant galaxies and nebula long after they have moved on, eons after suns have lived and died. An album using old music technology to try and conjure imagery of the far edges of the space we live in is a super idea. The further humankind peers into the distance, the further back in Time is being witnessed. It is a neat twist to look so far into the astronomical past and the put together an album using old-tech sounds.
I really enjoy this Steve Wilson album and will be happily playing it again. It is a serious record. It deserves to be heard, played and re-played in its entirety. I think that the extended pause between the two parts of the album is also worth listening to too. It is a necessary break if you have clued yourself into the subject matter, or indeed the subject of matter.
If you need a rating for this album I would give it Deep Space Nine out of ten.
Steven Wilson The Overview on Fiction Records
CD / LP / Blu-ray / D2C exclusive boxset / D2C exclusive red vinyl LP + poster / retail exclusive mint colour LP / digital platforms AVAILABLE HERE
Tour dates:
Meanwhile I'm off to listen to his previous album, after I have played this, his latest again.
Spencer Ide
25th March, 2025
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