Porcupine Tree
Deadwing

The story of Rock is quite amusing. Really amusing. We can find artists of outstanding artistic caliber but ignored and unknown to most, just as we are capable of finding bands praised by the public, which, perhaps, upon closer analysis, could raise some residual doubts about their actual qualities. In my humble and timid opinion, Porcupine Tree and "genius" Wilson quite faithfully fall into the latter case. It's true, I have only listened to three albums of the much-adored (here in Italy) British neo-prog-psychedelic-ambient ensemble, but that was enough for me to form my own personal idea. Also because among those three albums I've sampled, there's the famous (and more than good, to be honest) "The Sky Moves Sideways". Not an absolute masterpiece, but an absolutely recommendable and enjoyable album.

Now, coming to the subject of the review, I just can't talk about this "Deadwing" in triumphant tones. It was presented to me as an incredible "Masterpiece," but, honestly, I see little "Master" in it, and what remains are small "pieces," scattered here and there throughout the album, seeking glory. Why, you may ask? Simply because when the first track of the album starts, the title track, after the first minute of listening, I am overwhelmed by a disarming sense of Déjà vu. What is this song, a posthumous Rush unreleased track, seasoned with a little Gilmour-style Solo made post-Dark Side by any chance? And that pseudo-psychedelic interlude as predictable as a long-range shot at the 90th minute in a football match (complete with another Solo, this time with a Petrucci-flavored aftertaste in "As I Am")? Well... And "Swallow"? With that initial Hard riff like those we've heard thousands of times in the '70s? And that catchy bridge? And that mindless refrain (excuse the term, but I think it’s an insult to the listener's intelligence)? Not to mention that "gem" that will reach posterity with the name of "Lazarus"... yes, it's cute, yes, it's so sweet, yes, it moves my 11-year-old cousin... wait a moment, are we perhaps talking about the new BSB single?? Mellifluous to the point of nausea... So here I welcome "Halo" with open arms, at least that bassline is reasonably engaging, the whole rhythm section convinces me more... even Steven seems to sing more personally, whispering the words of the lyrics, too bad about the usual cloying chorus that ruins everything. After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed are welcome. Finally, we reach the most overrated song on the album, "Arriving Somewhere, But Not Here." For heaven's sake, it’s not "ugly" in an absolute sense, but it has a stifling rhetorical flavor: it starts slow with a relaxing arpeggio, continues in this vein, a predictable and very predictable prelude, however, to the Metal explosion of clear Opethian mark halfway through the song. It seems conceived in a forced manner, the structure is the typical pre-packaged one of a progressive mini-suite. But how many songs have been created in the past like this (and with decidedly better melodies)? Millions.

The second part of the album doesn't deserve particular attention (ahem, neither does the first one really...), where we find a useless "Mellon scratch" (but with a very pleasant final vocal, even if it doesn’t quite match with the rest of the track), a passably catchy, yet quickly dismissable "Open Car", a bland "The Start of Something Beautiful" (but when does something Beautiful start here?), with the punctual refrain in the style of "mass appeal" and a little instrumental towards the romanticized ending of the "now you must be moved otherwise I’ll beat you up" genre. The penultimate track is the Rock equivalent of a testicular anesthesia (a delirious whine difficult to suggest in words) and the inevitable Hidden/Bonus Track that completes the work, representing the summary of the entire, ephemeral, album.

That said, to be fair, I feel compelled to thank Wilson for having created, together with his buddy Akerfeldt, a few years ago, that "Blackwater Park" which I loved so much and which kept me company in days of solitude and melancholy (his is the background singing, in the enchantingly sad chorus of "Bleak," for example).
Mind you, I am not insinuating that PT "totally suck," but rather that they are, more simply, overrated (which is quite a big difference).

And if we come to consider "masterpiece" an album devoid of personality and communicative ability like Deadwing, then the story of Rock is not only very amusing but also profoundly unfair.