Trollheart

Who remembers Lenny Kravitz? Hey, it ain't over till it's over...

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Fear of a blank planet --- Porcupine Tree --- 2007 (Roadrunner)


Over the course of my admittedly limited exposure to this band, I've come to a conclusion that has probably been reached by many others who have heard their music, and that is that the one thing you can expect from Porcupine Tree is the unexpected. Their last album prior to this, “Deadwing”, had nine tracks and was just under an hour long. The one following this, 2010's “The incident”, has nineteen tracks and clocks in at an amazing seventy-five minutes. “Fear of a blank planet” contains only six tracks --- although one of them is over seventeen minutes long --- and just about hits the fifty-minute mark. But even then: a seventeen minute track could be like “Moonloop”, off “The sky moves sideways”, which is essentially 17 minutes of NASA chatter, weird sounds and ambient effects.

Directly associated with the Public Enemy album “Fear of a black planet”, this album explores the themes of coming to terms with technology which is perhaps making people less communicative and is taking over their lives. You can see that now, as people walk along texting or in some cases playing games on their iphones, oblivious in the main to the world around them, and often placing their lives at risk as they step out onto a busy roadway while typing “lol” or somesuch nonsense. And the amount of us listening to ipods as we go about our daily commute, business, or even work, has easily increased by a factor of ten since Walkmans were consigned to history. As Fish once remarked, most of us now wear “aural contraceptives, aborting pregnant conversation”. He was referring to Walkman tape players, but the idea is still valid, even moreso today.

Never one to shy from the hard choices in life, and music, Steven Wilson, the brains and creative force behind Porcupine Tree for over thirty years now, must be painfully aware that as he lambasts technology he is also one of its principal champions, using the very latest, state-of-the-art advances to make his music. So he's not advocating a return to simpler times; technology and life moves on, that's progress and without it we stagnate and die as a race. But he wants people to use technology in a positive way, to enrich and enhance their lives, not to stunt and restrict it. Man and machine, hand in hand (or hand in circuit), working together to better the human race. Don't tell Skynet!

It opens with the title track, itself a long enough track at just under seven and a half minutes, guitar driven with ominous chords and riding along at a good lick, and I'm not sure if Steven Wilson's using a vocoder or just some sort of other synthesised effect on his voice, but it makes it sound kind of mono, mechanical, alien. The stranglehold he sees technology having upon us is reflected as he sings, a latter-day Roger Waters ”TV, yeah it's always on/ The flicker of the screen /A movie actress screams /I'm basking in the sh1t flowing out of it”

Great keys from Richard Barbieri, with the whole thing pausing almost on the four minute mark for an extended instrumental section, synth and piano creating a disturbing wall of sound before Wilson's guitar rocks out, Gavin Harrison thumping out the drumbeat. A nice Marillion-style outro then before Wilson comes back in with the final vocal. He certainly has a handle on the “youth of today”, with lyrics like ”Don't try engaging me /The vaguest of shrugs/ The prescription drugs /You'll never find/ A person inside” and ”My friend says he wants to die/ He's in a band/ They sound like Pearl Jam/ The clothes are all black /The music is crap.”

As you might expect on an album with only a half-dozen songs, there are no actual short tracks on this, but for what it is, “My ashes” is the shortest, at five minutes and change. Acoustic guitar and gentle keys lead the song along, but it's really built on the passionate vocal of Steven Wilson, with some really expressive strings courtesy of the London Session Orchestra. Mandolin-style guitar also adds to the melody, but it's those strings that really start to take over the music, and I'd definitely call this a ballad. It takes us into the epic track, over seventeen minutes of it.

“Anesthetize” opens slowly and low-key, with more ominous keyboard and synth passages, slow, measured but somehow rolling percussion, the guitar getting a bit more intense and then an excellent solo from Rush's Alex Lifeson as the song enters its fifth minute. More references to the way people blank out and just stare at the TV or stab at a computer games console: ”The dust in my soul /Makes me feel the weight in my legs/ My head in the clouds and I'm zoning out/ I'm watching TV but I find it hard to stay conscious/ I'm totally bored but I can't switch off.”

The vocals have faded away now, giving rise to another powerful instrumental section, becoming something of a jam that lasts for about three minutes before Steven comes back in singing. Backed by a solid bass line from Colin Edwin, it's joined by the guitar and keys, drums getting heavier and the guitar then breaking out in an almost heavy metal style. A really epic, spooky keyboard solo breaks out at about the tenth minute, then everything slows right down again in the twelfth, with heavy, horn-like synth taking the melody towards its next configuration, as chiming guitar slides in, percussion rolls and drums kick in, the tempo slows and Wilson's vocal ends the song in a slow, balladic style with some emotive accompanying guitar and keys carrying the melody to conclusion.

Simple piano carries “Sentimental” until guitar comes in, the song uptempo but slow; I'd have to class it as another ballad, although it does speed up a little in the final minute, with some nice Spanish guitar and then ends as it began on the lonely piano line, this time accompanied by swirling synth fading out, and taking us into “Way out of here”, with soundscapes from Robert Fripp, guesting as one of Steven Wilson's heroes from King Crimson. A much harder, rockier song, it builds up a lot of tension over its duration, dropping to simple guitar about halfway through then exploding again into a heavy, powerful sound, ending on a long, extended synth line.

The album then ends on “Sleep together”, effects guitar and ominous piano backing up Wilson's introspective vocal which suddenly comes alive in the second minute with harder guitar and synth backing, possibly strings too: certainly sounds like it. A powerful ending, mostly instrumental, and the album is done. I find myself wondering was it good, was it bad? This is a problem I have with Porcupine Tree: some of their material I really like, some I just don't get. It's not quite as bad as Dream Theater but they do tend to use a lot of long instrumental passages that a lot of the time seem to me to just be filling in the tracks. There's nothing wrong with that of course, but it's really the lyrical content that concerns me, and though the title track and one or two others have great lyrics, I found it hard on this album to follow the actual theme.

I guess for me the jury is still out on PT: I have yet to listen to another of their full albums, this being the first I listened to that wasn't part of a playlist. Perhaps that's the problem, and something I need to address. It worked in a way with Spock's Beard, who I never could have seen myself getting into, and did eventually. Maybe repeated listens will reveal previously hidden depths to this album; I feel sure they will.

Oh yes, I have a feeling that my path and that of Steven Wilson and Co. will inevitably cross again, given time.

TRACKLISTING

1. Fear of a blank planet
2. My ashes
3. Anesthetize
4. Sentimental
5. Way out of here
6. Sleep together

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Yeah I'm no real fan of Ozzy either, but hey, the album was there and it didn't totally suck, so why not review it? Got some decent tracks on it, you have to admit...
I was a little more impressed with Cloven Hoof than I expected, especially as their albums developed over time. Not a favourite band of mine, but they weren't terrible either.
Oh don't talk to me about Venom! Suffering through four albums was more than enough, and I really had to struggle to find anything good or positive to say about them. Most of it was, as more or less expected, just noise. To think I was afraid of them when I was younger! Yeah I guess the only way you can look at Venom is in a satirical way, see them as the clowns of the NWOBHM and just shrug: what ya gonna do?

Actually, to be honest, I feared listening to boybands more than Venom, but in the end there was a lot of positivity I could take out of the boyband experience, to my amazement. Couldn't say the same about those guys though!

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Many songs conjure up definite images when you hear them, but does this one remind you of anything but rabbits?

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Anyone who's a regular reader of my journal will know I'm a big fan of Bon Jovi. I don't really care who thinks they're past it, dad-rock, whatever: I see each new album as being consistently excellent, and the guys only seem to improve with age in my eyes. Sure, they've been going now for over thirty years, but so have a lot of other bands, some of whom fail to maintain the high quality of work as they edge towards their third decade that Bon Jovi do. I don't think there's any one album I can point to and say it's not up to scratch, compared to the rest of their catalogue... oh wait, there is. I forgot “7800 degrees Fahrenheit”, which is generally accepted to be their weakest album.

But that aside, they've continued to turn out opuses (opi?) every few years, and notwithstanding the foregoing, I've yet to be disappointed by a Bon Jovi album. I think that Jon and Richie's songwriting talent is not given the credit it's due: look at songs like “Wanted dead or alive”, “Right side of wrong”, “Just older” or the powerful “Living in sin”. These are great rock songs, great compositions and show a deep and meaningful understanding of the human condition, and what makes us the people we are.

Well, enough preaching. If you hate Bon Jovi this is unlikely to convince you, and if you like or love them then you already know what I'm talking about. This particular song I want to concentrate on here comes from the 2005 album “Have a nice day” and is one of the few on which Richie Sambora does not contribute: in fact, it's co-written by Jon with Billy Falcon, with whom the band began working back in 2000, and who has participated in some tracks on both “Crush” and “Bounce” before this, and “Lost highway” and “The Circle” after it. It's the story of the deterioration both in music and in its appreciation, and so it's aimed both at the industry and the bands --- well, some of them --- who milk it for the money and have no real love, or indeed talent, for music.

Last man standing (Bon Jovi) from “Have a nice day”, 2005
Music and lyrics by Jon Bon Jovi and Billy Falcon

It's really cleverly set, with the protagonist, the eponymous Last Man Standing, presented as a type of fairground attraction, something you might find in one of those old carnival freak shows. The hook is that he really plays music, he doesn't just mime. Patrons are invited by Jon to ”Come see a living, breathing spectacle/ Only seen right here” as he sneers at the current music fads and declares ”So keep your pseudo-punk, hip-hop, pop-rock junk/ And your digital downloads!”

It's almost prophetic, as we move further into an age where, more and more, style wins out over substance, and people are more concerned with the danceability of a song than its lyrical content, or how it's actually played. With ipods, YouTube and the like now, people are more likely to grab the tracks they like from an album or artiste, and not sit down and take the time to listen through to an album all the way, in the process quite possibly missing some really good music. I'm as guilty of this as other people, although I do try to make time to listen to albums as well as playlists. But with music increasingly dominated by synthesisers, loops and samples, this song warns that the day of the humble guitarist, and indeed the singer/songwriter, may be numbered. Let's make sure it isn't.


Come see a living, breathing spectacle
Only seen right here.
It's your last chance in this lifetime:
The line forms at the rear.
You won't believe your eyes,
Your eyes will not believe your ears!
Get your money out, get ready,
Step right up, yeah you, c'mere!

You ain't seen nothing like him:
He's the last one of the breed.
You better hold on to your honey:
Honeys, don't forget to breathe!
Enter at your own risk, mister
It might change the way you think:
There's no dancers, there's no diamonds;
No this boy don't lip-synch.


Here's the last man standing!
Step right up, he's the real thing!
The last chance of a lifetime
To come and see, hear, feel the real thing.

See those real live calloused fingers
Wrapped around those guitar strings;
Kiss the lips where hurt has lingered:
It breaks your heart to hear him sing.
The songs were more than music, they were pictures from the soul ---
So keep your pseudo-punk, hip-hop, pop-rock junk
And your digital downloads!

Here's the last man standing!
Step right up, he's the real thing!
The last chance of a lifetime
To come and see, hear, feel the real thing.

Take your seats now, folks, it's show time.
Hey, Patrick --- hit the lights.
There's something in the air:
There's magic in the night.
Now here's the band, they really play;
I'll count the first one in.
I don't know where it's going,
We all know where it's been.”

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REO Speedwagon get a lot of stick for their slushy ballads, but the worm really thinks they rock on this track. This is “Back on the road again”.

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We were shipwrecks --- Ilia --- 2011 (Self-released)


I don't often copy-and-paste directly, but I am so impressed by this introduction and mission statement that I feel it needs to be read verbatim, as the band wrote it. So, from their MySpace page: ilia, which members currently consist of Jessica Frizzell on drums, Melissa Newman on guitar, and Brittney Mosher on vocals and guitar, is not just a band. Ilia is a response to what a few passionate individuals see, feel, and perceive around them. We believe there should always be a purpose in whatever you do. There must be sincerity, drive, intentionality. So as ilia progressed into something more than just a band leading youth worship, we felt that as the band got serious, so we should seriously think about why we thought we were called to travel throughout the world playing the music we wrote. It's not that we think we are innovative or impressive in what we do, though we believe that excellence is what we should always strive for. Our passion is that we want to see people changed.

The world is slowly being suffocated by Media. Media tells us that we are not skinny enough, we aren't strong enough, we aren't attractive enough. Our success is based on how big our TV is, what kind of cars we own, how much money is in our bank account, and how many people come to our shows. It's lies are constantly and consistently burned into us and it feeds us it's poison one drop at a time until we finally collapse; empty and taken advantage of and wondering how this happened and why it is happening us.

We are surrounded by people, all different, all unique. We constantly evaluate and determine a person's value by what they are wearing, what they look like, how they act and what they do. We deal with feelings of mistrust, the fear of rejection, the pain of what goes on at home behind closed doors and it is all carefully and neatly hidden behind metal skin. Sometimes our inner selfs leak out and we try to cover it up with a laugh or a smile or a well placed joke. Or sometimes we lash out taking our frustrations and pain and misery out on the people around us, because hurt people hurt people.
Our human condition is desperate. We are lonely and broken and do not have the strength to fix ourselves and are too afraid or proud to ask for help. We have this hole inside us that we so desperately try to fill with anything that will pour inside but it's no use, we find ourselves searching for something else. So we stand with arms crossed and hardened features daring someone, pleading for someone, to break past our defenses and find our souls within.

There is something so appealing about someone that is real isn't there? Truly real. They refuse to believe the lies that Media or anyone else tries to shove down their throats. They were shipwrecks, if you will, but they are hopeful of a different future that Media is causing the world to fall too. They stand tall, beautiful, authentic; broken but mending. They are honest about their faults, but are not controlled by them and instead of succumbing to the darkness they fight towards the light; they are fighting to find what it means to be human again. We are striving to be those people. This is why our new EP is entitled We Were Shipwrecks.

Our hearts, our ears, our arms are yours. We are just as broken as you. We hurt and go through things just like you and would never try to lie to you saying that we don't. We are not above you. We are not below you. We are beside you. We write and perform and connect so that maybe it would speak to you in some way that would invoke change, hope, action, or the lifting of burdens in you.
This is who we are. We are lovers. we are Truth Seekers. We are Freedom Fighters. Our canvas is the world and our paint is music and melody and we will paint it with Truth, Love, Hope, and Justice.

This says more about this band than I ever could. A trio of ladies, Ilia appear, on the surface, to be either a Christian Rock band or one certainly associated with such types, but I don't think they deserve to be so easily pigeonholed, and definitely you should not shy from listening to their music just because of that, if it offends or turns you off. As I found out with Narnia, you don't have to be a believer to enjoy the music, and Ilia don't make the mistake of trying to convert you by singing about how great God is.

Another thing I don't do that often is review EPs, and this only has five tracks, if you discount the two live and acoustic versions of two of the songs already on the EP. So probably a short review, but in these days of bands who just get together to make money and appear on the TV or in magazines, it's refreshing to meet a group who seem to actually care about their music, and more, who want to try to communicate the importance of the music and their own view on the modern world to their listeners.

Okay, so the album starts powerfully, on a heavy note with crashing guitars and thumping drums as “Ezekiel” opens proceedings, frontwoman Brittney Mosher on vocals and guitar, aided by Melissa Newman also on guitar, while Jessica Frizzell occupies the drumseat. There's a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm about this song, growling, pounding guitars and an impassioned, determined vocal from Mosher, and as a mission statement they couldn't really have done better, declaring ”We were never meant to die/ So resuscitate us!”

The title track then is a little more restrained, still with those heavy guitars and powerful hooks, Brittney Mosher's vocal a little less angry and incensed on this, and it's a real anthem which no doubt captures the imagination of their audience when played live. Mosher definitely has a powerful voice, very distinctive, but I'd like to hear what it's like when she tackles a ballad or slower song. There's a certain feel of country, or country-rock about “Reaching”, with Mosher stretching her voice above an almost Edge-like guitar from Melissa Newman. “Fall on us” is a mid-paced rocker, with some nice backing vocals and a very commercial sound that would make a decent single, some quite restrained guitar and a really good beat.

And all too soon it's over, as “We will rise”, surely another statement of intent, if not a prophecy soon to be fulfilled, takes us out in a gentle ballad with superb jangly guitar, inspired percussion and a soulful vocal from Mosher that just oozes emotion and sincerity. Actually not fully a ballad --- it gets a little heavier in the middle, with sharp, angry guitar --- but definitely the slowest and most appropriately balladic track on this short album, and a great little closer.

It's hard to judge a band on the basis of such a brief encounter, but within five tracks I've already grown to like Ilia, and I can see that the words on their MySpace page are not just words, they are a statement of intent, a philosophy and an absolute belief. On the strength of this offering, I can't wait till their first full-length album is released.

TRACKLISTING

1. Ezekiel
2. We were shipwrecks
3. Reaching
4. Fall on us
5. We will rise

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