Steven Wilson
4 1/2

I don't anticipate EPs with great enthusiasm; I'm the kind of person who, if leading a band, would keep new songs in the fridge for a subsequent album. However, Steven Wilson always sparks curiosity. And here he offers us an EP with 5 new tracks plus a reissue of an old one.

Here, he probably doesn't enchant as he usually does; perhaps these were melodies and ideas that came to mind at some random moment, with the urge to share them without necessarily wanting to develop them into something seriously concrete and constructed (well, this is generally the mentality behind the creation of an EP). But he gives us 37 minutes that are still worthy of his name, never lacking the quality that has always distinguished him.

Starting already with the long and well melodically structured "My Book of Regrets": a track very much a child of his past with Porcupine Tree, characterized precisely by that generally alternative sound that marked the band in the second phase of its career; clean and simple guitar lines plus some background effects and a structure not too complex but that doesn't exclude changes within it (see its slow section).

Also worthy of Wilson are the two soft tracks "Year of the Plague" and "Sunday Rain Sets In": light yet brilliant melody in the former, led by high and delicate acoustic arpeggios and orchestral arrangements, more challenging and slightly jazzy the latter.

However, the track that tends to stand out is "Happiness III": it's pure pop-rock, and one must admit it without shame, it's an unusually "bubbly" (but not too much) track for Wilson, and this too must be admitted without shame. Not even with Blackfield had he made such an immediate and effective pop track; when I heard it, I thought, "This guy can't make a bland track even when he does pop!" If we think about it, sometimes the true artist is recognized precisely when they make the most "easy" track possible... Not everyone can make it seem not banal.

"Vermillioncore" instead shows the more electronic and experimental Wilson, with all those effects and those dark bass lines. The new version of "Don't Hate Me" (a track made with Porcupine Tree in the 1999 album "Stupid Dream") should be dismissed; if you take away the chorus sung by Ninet Tayeb and the fusion part of electric piano replacing the flute, the rest is a sterile copy of the original, just like the revisitation of "Lazarus"; this leads us to say calmly that it's better for Wilson to give up covering his old projects.

In essence, we can say that the magnificence of "Hand. Cannot. Erase." is still in our thoughts, but we cannot feel disappointed by these new tracks. Steven Wilson is always there!