Fear of a Blank Planet

I'm a fairly large Porcupine Tree fan and Steven Wilson (the man behind the band's production, writing, lead guitar and vocals) is one of my favorite people in music right now. It seems like everything he touches turns to gold. Very talented.

The reason I love Porcupine Tree is that nothing else really quite sounds like them. They can be heavy one minute with rocking guitar riffs and then suddenly turn very…strange and sound scape-y, or veer more towards pop or…It's very, very strange. Usually when I try to explain PT to people who haven't heard them before, I break down and end up saying something to the effect of "Porcupine Tree is, like, um…er…well, they're like Porcupine Tree!"

And the tradition continues here with the follow up to their awesome Deadwing. The CD begins with the title track, which sounds very standard Porcupine Tree, more towards the heavy side. Honestly, I haven't really gotten into this track. It sounds way too busy for my tastes and the vocal effects make it a little hard to understand the lyrics at times.

The second track, My Ashes is a much more mellow song, providing a nice break from the title track's busyness. I really liked this song a lot, probably because of my current musical mood, which is tending towards less heavy and more melodic/open songs.

The third track is Anesthetize, the 17 minute epic which has to be my favorite track on the album by far. Alex Lifeson from Rush guests on this track's guitar solo which leads into a VERY experimental and weird sounding section about 5 minutes in which ramps up into a quick tempoed, groove oriented section that continues until towards the very end of the song. I LOVE this part. This one song would have been enough for me to buy the CD alone.

Sentimental the 4th song is more along the lines of My Ashes, but with more strange effects on the drums giving the opening an odd feeling. This feels a lot like something that would fit right in on their Stupid Dream album, which isn't a bad thing by any means.

Way Out of Here highlights for me how much I enjoy listening to Gavin Harrison's drumming. He keeps it very groove oriented, but still with a lot of extra room to play around and make things interesting. He very rarely plays a straight ahead pattern. The middle of the song turns…odd and then suddenly drops from a sort of haunting guitar line into a really heavy riff. It's a song of contrasts really the entire way through.

Sleep Together starts off electronicaish sounding and stays that way through the entire song with a lot of synth effects with the guitars only kicking in during the chorus.

Overall, I like the album, but I don't think it beats out Deadwing as my favorite from Porcupine Tree. It's definitely going to be on heavy rotation in my car for quite some time to come.