Steven Wilson Gets “Personal” in Vienna (2013)

Primoz Last updated 24 January 2019

JERNEJ ČEMAS

Location: Vienna / Gasometer / Austria
Date: 02.11.2013

Steven Wilson is a name many people know today as the vocalist/guitarist of Porcupine Tree. Plenty of others see him as the torchbearer who carried the progressive rock tradition of the seventies into the 21st century. That is, the real deal in prog rock, the kind that changed how a lot of people think about making music. Porcupine Tree have a pretty big reputation, one that could in principle have grown even bigger, but Steven Wilson chose to go solo. This year he put out his third solo record, The Raven That Refused to Sing, and he’s promoting it on his current world tour. The first European leg went down in spring, and now the second one is underway, which also stopped in Vienna, at the Gasometer hall, which holds up to 3,000 people.

When we walked into the hall, everything was already set up. The rugs for Wilson had been vacuumed, and a projection was running on the screen showing a street guitarist tuning his guitar, while the speakers played ambient music by Bass Communion, one of Wilson’s side projects. Right at eight o’clock the street musician finally got his guitar in tune and started playing Trains by Porcupine Tree, and at that moment Steven Wilson walked onto the stage and kicked off tonight’s set with that very song. Sadly, Trains was played only acoustically, despite the hope that the rest of the band would join in later and give the song that epic feel.

After a pleasant acoustic intro, the band that accompanied Wilson on tour took the stage and launched into Luminol from the current album. At first you couldn’t hear every detail perfectly, but the glitch was fixed pretty quickly. This time Steven Wilson played without the charismatic drummer Marco Minnemann, who showed off his versatility once again on the latest album. In Minnemann’s place behind the drum kit sat Chad Wackerman, who has played with Frank Zappa, Steve Vai and other renowned musicians, among others. Wilson really couldn’t have pulled off this show with anyone but a jazz drummer, since it demands a lot of skill and experience from whoever sits behind the kit. Already during Luminol it was obvious that Wilson had nothing but pros around him. Bassist Nick Beggs stood out first, serving up some fascinating bass lines, and then everyone else got their moment too. Of course, most of the attention went to Steven himself, who paced the stage and told the others when to jump into a section of a song. At times Wilson came across as too egocentric (some of his gestures looked a bit too narcissistic), but that makes a certain sense, given that he’s the producer on the albums and needs to have everything under control at the shows too. Besides handling vocals and playing guitar, Steven also sat down at the mellotron now and then, where he only provided the backing layer, while the harder keyboard work was done by Adam Holzman the whole time.

It’s hard to say who stood out more with their skills. Still, plenty of eyes were on guitar virtuoso Guthrie Govan, who is one of the most acclaimed guitarists around these days, as you can tell from the many guitar magazines. With The Holy Drinker, Drive Home and many other songs, Govan proved himself a guitarist who really knows how to squeeze the maximum out of his guitar and amp. What was even more fascinating was how well Govan communicates with the rest of the band. Many of the solos were played together with keyboardist Adam Holzman and flutist Theo Travis. At times it seemed Govan managed to lock his guitar onto the same sonic frequency as Travis’s clarinet, so the melody gained another dimension and a more epic feel. During Holy Drinker, bassist Nick Beggs stood out too, picking up a chapman stick while Steven took the bass guitar. That gave the song extra dynamics thanks to one more standout instrument.

The first part of the show focused on songs from the current album, but then came a surprise with no title. It was a new song, and Wilson mentioned that it gets a different name every time, and for this show he’d called it A Death in the Shadow. He said the newcomer would be on a new album that’s already in the works. The 15-minute piece itself was full of surprises and strange twists. At first it seemed Wilson had taken the early psychedelic period of Porcupine Tree as his model, and the atmosphere was pretty morbid, but as the song went on it turned out he’d also drawn on the latest Porcupine Tree albums, which lean more toward metal. In the second half of the song there were heavy distorted guitars and the drums kicked into a faster tempo. In short, the new song proved Wilson still has fresh ideas despite all the albums he’s released so far. And it’s worth stressing that his ideas still sound progressive.

After the new song, a curtain dropped down with various projections playing on it, while the band played “behind” it. The crowd got The Watchmaker, which starts out calm and then develops nicely, with Adam Holzman’s piano standing out, of course. He provided a great backdrop all night with various keyboards, such as the mellotron, Hammond organs and minimoog. Holzman seemed to be completely in his own world the whole show. As if he were still under the influence of that pill he took sometime in the seventies. The curtain and its projections gave the concert extra atmosphere, sometimes downright morbid and melancholic, especially when songs from the first two albums were played, which are much harder going than the current album. That’s probably down to the heavier use of atonality and all sorts of weird King Crimson-style melodies.

The funny part of the show was Wilson’s banter with the crowd, which was full of sarcasm and cynicism too. In his first announcement Wilson said he has no musical education, that he can’t even read music, but that his head is full of ideas, which he tells the other members, and then they try to explain his ideas with their instruments. He gave the example of a lost little candy that wandered into the forest at night, with guitarist Guthrie Govan trying to describe the lost candy with a melody on his guitar. In the second announcement he pointed out that the mellotron keyboard turned 50 this year. According to him, musicians used the mellotron to recreate the sounds of classical instruments without having to hire a whole London orchestra, even though the mellotron sounds were anything but good. The music lesson with Adam Holzman was undoubtedly both instructive and fun.

In one sense, the peak of the show came with Raider II from Grace For Drowning, which is very long but structured in a really interesting way. The melancholy hit its high point with the title track The Raven That Refused to Sing, accompanied by a projection of the animated video.

After two hours Wilson still wasn’t done. You could see the tiredness in the crowd, and in the band Theo Travis looked the most worn out, having switched between concert flute, saxophone and clarinet the entire time. Still, they had to dig up a bit more strength for Remainder the Black Dog, again from Grace For Drowning.

Wilson finally announced they were wrapping up and told us not to expect any hit from him, because he’s never written one (though Porcupine Tree’s discography does have quite a few potential radio hits). Wilson went for a different ending, which was undoubtedly a surprise, since they played one more new song, called Happy Returns. Wilson said that maybe this one will become a hit… in a parallel dimension. But in the end it turned out the song has everything it takes to be a hit: a catchy melody, nice melodic vocals and emotional lyrics. As if he wanted to offer something similar to Trains, which opened the show.

It was a bit hard to imagine Steven Wilson playing two new songs, considering that less than a year had passed since the last album. And that’s where the main controversy came in. It was clear Wilson has no plans to revive Porcupine Tree anytime soon, yet on the other hand, the two new songs brought him pretty close to PT in terms of similarity.

Steven Wilson didn’t disappoint. He showed up in the most professional light with outstanding musicians you don’t get to see every day. Even though the attention was often on Wilson himself, the other members weren’t sidelined. The crew was tight, and you couldn’t detect any slip-ups. Just like with Porcupine Tree, the same goes for his “solo” shows: top-notch musicians with excellent stage production. You could write a truly exhaustive analysis of this show and still miss the point. The point is that a Steven Wilson concert, just like Porcupine Tree, is something you simply have to experience.

author: Primož Novak
photos: Jernej Čemas

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