Porcupine Tree
Stupid Dream

It's definitely easy to return to Stupid Dream by Porcupine Tree, the breakthrough album of 1999 by Steven Wilson's band, even after the subsequent albums by the British group. If yesterday we talked about a transition towards the song format for the porcupines, today it might be more fitting - and convenient - to consider the album as a carefree refuge for Steven's volcanic mind, who has produced and will continue to produce great works. But Stupid Dream is a special case, an album where a concept was truly nailed, more so than the Pink Floyd-style suites, prog rock, or Wilson's many other sound obsessions. Stupid Dream is the story of an epic infatuation, a destabilizing crush that makes it difficult to rationally evaluate what surrounds us. It must be experienced with the same spirit, and with the same mood, the idea of writing this review was born, aware of being just another one among many.

Stupid Dream opens with a girl's laugh, and there couldn't be a better start for this work, which is essentially a translation into notes of a love story, which, read like this, proves to be disarmingly mundane. A sound infatuation, pure, foolish, illusory, but effective. Bipolar Wilson continues to be sweetly tormented by a special person who is not like him, who listens to The Bends by Radiohead. For a moment, the homicidal demon of Raider II becomes just a distant shadow; the light prevails over the darkness, even if we don't know for how long. But as long as it lasts, it's fine. At the same time, he asks this person not to hate him because the dream will eventually (well, 11 years later...) turn into the hallucinatory reality of a Cenotaph. Stupid Dream can truly be considered, in the boundless discography of the porcupines, as the most sunny and enjoyable album of the band. If we exclude the melancholic vein of Don't Hate Me, which doesn't forgo a saxophone passage undoubtedly influenced by jazz rock, what strikes is the absolute lack of that depressing aura that guides Wilson's universe. It's hard to imagine a more effective painkiller than Pure Narcotic, the most successful track, and it's only the fourth. A small pop gem of rare beauty, refined in sounds but never self-serving, it inexorably wins you over with its meticulous quest for stimulating arrangements and the irresistible central chorus, truly the apotheosis of the aforementioned concept, so much so as to forgive its romantic and somewhat cloying spirit. In the subsequent Slave Called Shiver, introduced by a decisive bass riff, the tone gets slightly harsher, as does This Is No Rehearsal, which presents highly antithetical moods thanks to the trash rock digressions. The guitars become more aggressive, even though the metal note of the subsequent albums is still far (who said Deadwing?), leading to the second gem of the record, Baby Dream in Cellophane, introduced by acoustic chords that are still part of the mystery - they're dangerously similar to Wanderlust by Megadeth - and a memorable refrain, three minutes to be listened to in apnea. The choruses of Stranger by the Minute foreshadow the solutions of In Absentia, which will arrive several years later, while Smart Kid is the last key piece of Stupid Dream, a cosmic ballad that still lives on the dreamy beauty of the refrain.

Towards the end, there's also time for an interesting instrumental, dedicated to our director Tinto Brass, hence the name (but there's also a pun). In this track, flutes emerge, another instrument much loved by Wilson, for a typically prog composition that doesn't shy away from spilling over into some very aggressive solutions, but as said, the weight of the electric guitar is still moderate and far from what we'll hear in subsequent records. The powerful energy of a Shallow wouldn't be unwelcome, but it's still early, and in here it would probably be out of place. In return, in this track, we enjoy all the skill of the (ex) drummer Chris Maitland, and sorry if it's little. Stop Swimming closes the work always with butterflies in the stomach and walking ten centimeters off the ground, fantastic stories whispered in the ear, stories of complicity and runs in the meadows, hand in hand, kissed by the sunlight, the darkness can wait. Thus ends Stupid Dream, the most loved and hated album by Porcupine Tree, the break, the transition, the evolution, interpret it as you will, for the one writing it's simply a comforting, warm corner of serenity, where Wilson finally manages to find that dimension craved by his creative vein. And it's always easy to return to it. Is the infatuation perhaps perfection? Almost.