Band : Porcupine Tree
Album Title : The Incident
Label : Roadrunner Records
Distributor : CNR – Concreteweb Promotion Office.
Release Date : 15/09//2009
Review : CD

As always, Porcupine Tree’s brand of progressive rock is fiiled with incredible musicianship, clever time changes, and balanced in mood and texture. While it took me a number of listens, I did come to appreciate this one-song (55 minutes) album, although I can't say that it has a lot of staying power.

The Incident is more or less a collection of 6 real songs (“The Blind House“(5:47), “Drawing the Line“(4:43), “The Incident“(5:20),”Time Flies” (11:40), “Octane Twisted” (5:03)  and” I Drive the Hearse” (6:41)) tied together by Opeth-bursts (“Occam's Razor” (1:55), “Circle of Manias” (2:18) ), ambient electronic sounds (“Your Unpleasant Family” (1:48), beautiful acoustic/ivory pieces (“Great Expectations” (1:26), “Kneel and Disconnect” (2:03) ,”The Séance” (2:39))  and dark psych stuff (“Degree Zero of Liberty” (1:45), “The Yellow Windows of the Evening Train” (2:00)). So needless to say, pushing this all onto one track is a mistake in my opinion. It's too bad the band couldn't have worked some of these bits and pieces it into a larger proper song.

Personal highlights are the single “Time flies” and the earcandies “I drive the hearse” and “Octane twisted”. The extended version of “Time flies” has an interesting construction, creepy atmosphere and many small details that stand out, like the heartbreaking Floydian instrumental section (4.40-8.10), in particular... The verses in  “The blind house”  have some excellent writing which, unfortunately, gets overshadowed by the ‘free love’ chorusline. “Drawing the line”  and the title track are not among my favourites. While “Drawing the line” has nice piano melody backing, this song has a tendency to run in circles and never really gets off the ground and has a terrible chorus too. That aside though, this is still a pretty strong disc. The production is amazing and the performances are dead-solid, but the writing lacks the energy and flair that I was hoping for.

The self-produced album is completed by four standalone compositions that developed out of band writing sessions last December, “Flicker” , “Bonnie The Cat”, “Black Dahlia” and“Remember Me Lover”, housed on a separate CD to stress their independence from the title track.

While overall this is probably my least favorite Porcupine Tree album to date, I do still like it enough to recommend it to those who enjoy the band's style of music.

88/100

Cosmicmasseur.