We're only about three weeks into the new year, and I am expecting the second really great album of the year. Steven Wilson is releasing 4 1/2 today, a collection of songs recorded over the past 4 1/2 years that didn't quite fit on his albums. Since his quality has been outstanding on all the records released in this timeframe, I am convinced that this will be a great album as well.
The thing that really impresses me about Steven Wilson is that he has a spectacular command of musical history, especially within more progressive rock, yet he continually moves his music forward. He is great with a song structure where there is stark contrasts between chaos and harmony, and he collaborates with spectacular musicians. At first, I was worried when I saw that Gavin Harrison wouldn't play drums with him - but then I discovered Marco Minneman. In short, his band is absolutely spectacular, which is why today's song is an officially released live track.
Index is a song that to me shows that he has taken massive cues from one of the giants of progressive rock. The mood of this song is to me very similar to the mood Peter Gabriel often was able to evoke, and I am in particular thinking about Intruder here. Also, playing the chord structure over and over again while adding and subtracting elements is sometihng Mike Oldfield did on Tubular Bells, but it is here drawing even more from Trent Reznor's work with Nine Inch Nails, such as the ending of Closer - yet here it is all Steven Wilson. The song Index was originally on the stellar Grace For Drowning album - but here it is from the Get All You Deserve dvd, which is well worth owning!
It's taken a while... Although 11 days into the new year isn't really that long, I could have started earlier in 2015, but my #2 selection wasn't released until December 18... As usual, it is really hard to rank them individually, but I tried ranking my top 10. In reality, I am dead set on my favorite album being Chris Stapleton - and I think that #2-5 are better than #6-10, but I could easily change order within those groupings.
Chris Stapleton - Traveller
Baroness - Purple
Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls
Gavin Harrison - Cheating The Polygraph
Steven Wilson - Hand Cannot Erase
Motorpsycho - En Konsert for Folk
Flest
Faith No More - Sol Invictus
Torche - Restarter
Sunn O))) - Kannon
Kylesa - Exhausting Fire
After the first 10, there are 15 additional recordings that really deserve to be mentioned - they are all albums I really liked over the course of the year. I have listed them alphabetically - but there are no individual preferences here:
Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
Chris Cornell - Higher Truth
Clutch - Psychic Warfare
Echolyn - I Heard You Listening
Steve Earle & The Dukes - Terraplane Elder - Lore
Elephant9 - Silver Mountain
Enslaved - In Times
Ghost BC - Meliora
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
Robert Earl Keen - Happy Prisoner The Bluegrass Sessions
Otis Taylor - Hey Joe Opus Red Meat
Richard Thompson - Still
Steve Von Till - A Life Unto Itself
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Since Chris Stapleton's Traveller reached the first place on my list, I really feel like I need to let him be represented again - and this is a very country country song, which he plays with in the lyrics. Here is Nobody To Blame.
When I was born, I have a feeling that my parents dropped a giant rock in the ocean. This rock was my musical starting point. It had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Abba, Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon, and Chris de Burgh. That was music both of them liked - although my mom was more Beatles and my dad was more Rolling Stones. Then my dad brought in some songs that were more out of left field, and the one that really sticks with me was Norwegian new wave band The Cut and their version of In Dieser Stadt (I'll have to include that later). That was on the fringe of the rock, but it was definitely part of it. There was probably more to the rock as well, but the pieces that entered the ocean were definitely the ones I remember best.
What happens when you drop a rock in the ocean - or water in general? Waves... Waves form like rings way, way out. And that is what my musical life has been all about - chasing those wavy rings... I found a rock of my own to toss in and create some disturbances in the pattern when I discovered Kiss in 1980, my music teachers tossed in a rock of some classical music, especially Die Moldau by Smetana, which still stays with me, and then Arve started tossing in country music. These disruptions in the patterns didn't stop me, they made me look farther and farther - always seeking the new and the different. The fascinating thing is when you discover rings from rocks that had been tossed in earlier - such as my middle school music teacher Reidar Fiske's love for 10CC - or when they merge unexpectedly, creating new starting points for yet other rings to explore.
The reason I went to such great lengths to describe how I found Opeth, and then in turn Steven Wilson, is that this is once more a set of rings that both separate and unite. From Porcupine Tree I discovered the extraordinary drummer Gavin Harrison, who in turn has been playing for King Crimson, whose records have been remastered and mixed for 5.1 surround sound by Steven Wilson again - and who use Tony Levin as a bass player, whom I first encountered when listening to Peter Gabriel. And, as I previously mentioned, Steven Wilson worked with Fish - and I decided to see what those two albums were all about and found that I had given up on him too soon. I keep chasing those rings in the water, and by following them once more, I found Gavin Harrison's release from 2015, Cheating the Polygraph. It turned out that he had taken some of Porcupine Tree's compositions and arranged them for big band. Now, my experiences with big band music have been limited, but watching the movie Whiplash really made me appreciate some of it a little bit more - and I have had a taste for the work of Mingus and his big band for some time - so this sounded interesting to me. And then I listened, and my mind was blown away. This is challenging music, but man, is it good... Please, give mr. Gavin Harrison a chance and listen to Hatesong/Halo...
