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"Gather some of what we managed to sow... leave the lost years in a box of old letters... the chaos of the unknown is gone: so turn around and go home."
It is not a "pointless endeavor" to listen to the eighth album by "Good" John Wesley (formerly of Porcupine Tree) "A way you’ll never be" is undoubtedly his best, unquestionably his most authentic and mature in every aspect. In the past, his melodic Rock-Blues mix revealed several flaws in the structure of the pieces, often flat and repetitive, marked by even cloying refrains with significant inconsistency in the overall sound and very basic lyrics, but here the story is totally different. From the first notes of "By The Light of a Sun," you can perceive in its wonderful essentiality, the massive imposing sound structure set up: guitars (blasted at sidereal volumes), bass, and drums… choosing to put into play everything that represents him in terms of style and taste may superficially seem like a limitation if one considers this work as a genre album; ultimately, it represents his greatest trait, something that tremendously compacts the 10 pieces of the album into a cohesive organic block but anything but repetitive. The underlying idea is identity, scattered in every track of the album—in every more or less evident oxymoron (see the title itself)—in a well-defined conceptual path through music and words, with the constant shadow of an imperfect repeated, a tribute of unsolved regrets, the human condition clogged with all kinds of fear, indecision, insecurity… John's awakening is a shock therapy style "Electric Solar Attack", primarily in the essentiality of his guitar language, incendiary riffs (see "by the light of a sun," "A way you'll never be," "The Revolutionist") and solos that rain from above, deforming in every tone to reach out and touch that most intimate essence that "runs faster than light"… The lesson of the Porcupines has borne fruit with more varied and less predictable songwriting, which manages with newfound spontaneity to change register without getting clogged, thus moving from granite to velvet but without the excessive sound frills with which, for example, Steven Wilson often seasons his pieces… Wesley, describing this work, talks about 70s musical themes, characterized by the "Great Guitar" modernized with today's sounds, indeed the album does not sound dated at all, with expressiveness at the highest levels in the various "solos" (at times epic orgasmic) scattered throughout the album and a wise use of vocal registers (never redundant) he manages to balance the massive use of distortions and psychedelic dissonances.
To be appreciated is the work of the rhythm section with a Mark Prator on drums and percussion in an overwhelming state of grace and Sean Malone on bass—essential but never trivial (see in "Nada")—that inhibits any possible drop in tension… perhaps only in "The Silence in coffè" do we stop for a moment, with the melancholy of the past and a few small regrets about what perhaps could have been done more… but the pause is very brief and the end of the album is even more intense.
Because if today's world remains uncertain and insecure, we still have to move forward... even when a middle-aged commuter living his "normal" daily challenge appears as a revolutionary, well then perhaps we come to understand that the big slogans, the absolute truths, the proclaimed changes—the great wars of principle, perhaps are just "Pointless Endeavors" ( "Pointless Endeavors"), the greatest revolution is to accept ourselves for what we are, for better or worse, to do our best in the life we have created, and not to worry too much about certain unsolvable problems that are actually only constants in our mind and which, therefore, as most classical Zen teaches, are ultimately not to be considered real problems.
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