OFF: Porcupine Tree at Shepherd's Bush Empire

[Jon Jarrett]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2001, Nick Medford wrote:

> Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 00:31:07 +0100
> From: Nick Medford <nick at HERMIT0.DEMON.CO.UK>
> Reply-To: BOC/Hawkwind Discussion List <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
> To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU
> Subject: Re: OFF: Porcupine Tree at Shepherd's Bush Empire
>
> In message <Pine.LNX.4.21.0106081916270.7767-100000 at chiark.greenend.o
> rg.uk>, Jon Jarrett <jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> writes
>
> > But enough of that. I do rather like _Lightbulb Sun_,
> >more so than _Stupid Dream_.
>
> I beg to differ. I hadn't heard LS prior to the gig and bought it afterwards as
> I thought the songs from it sounded pretty good live. But I think it's by far
> the weakest PT album: the title track is great... perhaps the most successful
> fusion of psych and pop they've achieved, and the second half of Russia On
> Ice is very fine too, but everything else is average to downright crap IMO:
> "The Rest Will Flow" and "Where Would We Be" are two of the most
> embarrassingly sterile overblown neo-prog efforts I've heard in a long while.
> And as for "Last Chance..", fusing a lightweight love song with samples from
> the Heaven's Gate cult leader is just crass. It just doesn't work and he ends
> up looking like a schoolboy trying to shock.

        But doesn't it so outstrip the *apalling* self-pity of `Stop
Swimming'? That line about the map is terrible. It's one of the only PT
songs I consider to be actually bad. `The Rest Will Flow', `Where We Would
Be' and `Feel So Low' are none of them good, but not worse than filler to
me. I actually like `Last Chance', at least, once it gets out of the song
bit and into the jam. I think that one just went on in the studio and they
didn't like to cut it so Steven arranged samples over it instead.

        I would nominate as items of particular worth, however, `Russia On
Ice' (obviously - though predictably it's better live with blue lights),
`How is Your Life Today?' (if they'd made this the only love-song on the
album it would look so much better - as it is I find it refreshingly
different, in musical terms only), and `Hatesong', all three bits of it,
the Edwin funky bass-line bit with the words, the Muslimgauze knocking-on-
pipes noises bit and especially the crunchy guitar NIN-a-like bit. I
thoroughly enjoy this song. And `4 Chords' is all right too, as is
`Shesmovedon', a marked upturn in single quality I thought.

> Whereas "Stupid Dream" has grown on me...  there are some excellent
> tracks: Even Less, Slave Called Shiver, Baby Dream and Tinto Brass are all
> among their best. The weakest track is "Pure Narcotic" and even that is
> considerably better than some of the Lightbulb Sun stuff.... IMHO of course.

        Hmm, we must be different people here. `Even Less' is
great. `Tinto Brass' I find OK. `Slave' and `Baby Dream' do nothing for
me. I do massively like `A Smart Kid' (I don't mind Steven being
sentimental when he does it like this, and I would have loved to write the
line, "There was a war but I must have won."), but after that bar the
medium quality `Piano Lessons' there's nothing I'd save; and I'd junk
`Baby Dream' and `Slave' also.

> The other thing is that the mournful lyrics and vocals, which were starting
> to wear a bit thin on Stupid Dream, blossom into total self-parody on LS.
> To call it sixth-form angst is almost too kind.

        Again I don't agree. I think the worst of this is on _Stupid
Dream_. I also think that that disc was far too long in the
coming; everything on it sounds overdone and sterile to me. I find
_Lightbulb Sun_ fresh by comparison, and more varied. Less time to grow
old in the studio. I also find _Stupid Dream_ uneasily caught in the move
from prog to pop, I think it lumbers whereas _Lightbulb Sun_ goes about
being a pop album in PT style quite merrily.

        Basically, I really don't very much like _Stupid Dream_.

> However the next studio PT album will allegedly be darker, stranger and
> have more guitars, so it should be a good 'un.

        Hard to see how it could be bad with that description, at least we
agree on this :-) Yours,
                         Jon

ObCassette: Blue Oyster Cult - _Some Enchanted Evening_ (it's the best
there is)
--
       Jon Jarrett (01223 514989)     jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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  "There is a certain pleasure in being mad, which none but madmen know"