January 4 - Routine

Steven Wilson. I was introduced to this English genius through Opeth, who I most certainly will be addressing later this year - and in all likelihood I will do so more than once as well. But let's talk about Steven Wilson. He started the band Porcupine Tree, which he initially created as a fictional band with a long backstory and album titles before starting to record as the band. The first album, On the Sunday of Life, was a compilation of the best songs he had released on several cassettes in the late 80s, and for the second album, Up on the Downstair, was also largely a solo project, but featured guest appearances by Richard Barbieri (keys) and Colin Edwin (bass), who later joined the band full force. He did expand the band further, first with Chris Maitland on drums, who was replaced by Gavin Harrison, and finally adding John Wesley as a touring member on vocals and guitar.

Porcupine Tree started gaining notoriety in progressive rock circles, and Steven Wilson's visions led him to recognition both within traditional progressive rock and in progressive metal. He produced Fish (of Marillion fame from the 80's) on both his Sunsets on Empire and Raingods with Zippos albums in 1997 and 1999, lent some of his talents to help produce Marillion's marillion.com album in 1999 (they have had Steve Hogarth as their lead singer since they got rid of Fish in 1988), and even worked with Norwegian singer Anja Garbarek, producing her 2001 album Waving and Smiling.

However, I did not know any of this at the time. I had given up on both Fish and Marillion (very prematurely, as it turns out), and Anja Garbarek was of no interest to me (I had heard some of her early work, and while it was ok, it wasn't my bag). Neither had I heard of Opeth yet, although Steven Wilson in 2001 produced one of their masterpieces, Blackwater Park. I actually stumbled across Opeth through sheer dumb luck, about 5 years later.

Fall 2006 through the summer of 2007 was a pretty grueling year for me. I was working full time at Alma College, and I was finishing up my Master of Arts degree in counseling at Spring Arbor University. On the face of it, it doesn't seem so bad, but finishing my counseling degree meant completing a practicum and internship, which was on top of the full time job. So my weekly schedule consisted of leaving home around 7 am and not coming home again until 9 pm or so Monday through Wednesday, then being home at "normal" time so I could be with the girls on Thursday evenings while my then wife worked, and "normal" time on Fridays - but with additional internship hours on Saturday mornings, which let me to miss several of Emma's soccer games. I know there are many people out there who have schedules that are harder than mine was, but for me, this year was still tough, and the only reason I could do it was that I knew that there was a light at the end of the tunnel - and I was hoping it wasn't a train.

So while I was doing this internship, I also walked the aisles of Meijer from time to time, and I always looked in their CD section (this was when they actually still took in CDs outside of the best sellers). While looking, I found this very interesting looking CD called Ghost Reveries by a band called Opeth. I had no clue what it was, so I put it back. However, I kept coming back to it, looking at it, thinking that this looks like something I will like. I eventually got to the point that I remembered the name after leaving the store, and during one of my no-shows sitting in one of the back rooms in the computer lab at MCCs Greenville M-Tec building (that was the name at the time - and yes, it had several study rooms in the computer lab back then), I searched YouTube for their music, and I found the song The Grand Conjuration from Ghost Reveries - and love affair was born. As usual, I filled in the back catalogue, album by album, and that's how I started seeing the name Steven Wilson pop up. He was the producer for the three albums leading up to Ghost Reveries: Blackwater Park (2001), Deliverance (2002), and Damnation (2003). The chain effect had begun...

So now we are at the beginning of 2016, looking back at 2015, and Steven Wilson released Hand. Cannot. Erase. It is his fourth proper solo album, and while it is not as good as Grace for Drowning (2011), it is still easily in my top 5 for 2015 - and yes, the list will eventually be published... To get you all started, I have selected what for me is the emotional centerpiece of Hand. Cannot. Erase., a song about loss and grief (this is starting to look like a theme here) called Routine.