I’ve always been a huge champion for Steven Wilson’s
career. With his work on Porcupine Tree, the 5.1 mixes for; King Crimson,
Jethro Tull, XTC, and Yes to name a few, and his solo career. He is a very,
very busy man when it comes to projects on the last two. This year, he’s back
in full circle with the release of his fourth album, Hand.Cannot.Erase. It’s Steven’s follow up to The Raven That Refused to Sing and it is
a joyous and spiritual adventure with emotional textures told in the story of a
disappearance of a woman who was dead for three years which became a mystery before
she was discovered.
Steven was inspired by the story of a woman named Joyce
Carol Vincent in which she was the subject of a documentary in 2012 called, Dreams of a Life, and he knew that this
was a subject that Wilson wanted to touch on and it captures the essence of the
mysterious person. It is also a straightforward album with an electronic pop
and not to mention the Prog aspects thrown in as well. And also having Israeli
singer, Ninette Tayeb and a Boys choir onto the album it’s an excellent
combination on what he’s brought to the table.
With the ambient introduction on First Regret and seguing into the overdrive resemblance of the
guitar styles of Pete Townshend’s flamenco touches with 3 Years Older, it is a perfect introduction to get you into the
story. With the narratives, it is a perfect epic sounding that has a theatrical
atmosphere that Wilson gives the band members a chance to go into a lyrical
view of isolation and shutting the worlds both in and out upon you.
Katherine Jenkins describes the narration of her teen years
of the meeting of her sister and describing of their love of the music on the
mix tapes that included This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance, and Felt. Along with
books, clothes, and her first cigarette in a spoken dialogue on the electro pop
beauty of Perfect Life while the
title track featuring Tayeb on background vocals, has an ascending rhythm
section and singing the line “Hand Cannot
Erase this Love” it is magic when the band are together as one in a soaring
melody. Tayeb herself is brilliantly
magnificent on her vocals and the moment I played it, I couldn’t turn it off.
Because she along with Steven himself, is brilliant. Simply
brilliant. The other two tracks shows how she can take it into the areas of
showing that hope maybe there for survival. The nine-minute epic, Routine begins with a haunting and
moving ballad for the first four minutes before it kicks into gear in the
Orchestral format as they both take turns on the lyrics.
The ominous 12-minute Ancestral
goes into a deeper and darker voyage with moody and intense nightmarish
tones and the lyrics almost have a dystopian scenery “And hiding there among the wreckage left behind/they see things that
haunt them/When they close their eyes.” It has a string section,
electronics, keyboards, drums flute, mellotron, and the haunting guitar
melodies, capture the composition and hitting the nails on the wall very hard.
The harder rock and mystifying enormous drum beats and
Rhodes solo along with the bass line that has a Jazzy groove and futuristic
guitar solo on Home Invasion, has this
wonderful catchy beat and the double-tracking vocals as well. Both Guthrie,
Marco, Nick, and Adam are having a blast on this track and it go into a
Floyd-sque beauty and back into the eruptive roar.
But on the closing tracks, Happy Returns and Ascendant
Here On… is reminding the listener that the while the story is very much
giving a farewell to the character’s brother and knowing that she isn’t coming
back, and the aftermath what is about to come. The ballad is a lukewarm chance
for the brother that not to give up and hopefully to start a new chapter and the
Boys choir is beautifully done that has sadness, mourn, and the flashbacks from
childhood to remember and focusing the good times the character had before
fading away into the sunset.
I have listened to Hand.Cannot.Erase
about eight times. This shows Wilson at his finest hour and it shows that
he isn’t just a musician, but also a composer and an arranger at the same time
and knowing exactly where the band and choir need to be in. He has done a
superb job with this. The DVD features a documentary done by Lasse Hoile about
the making of the album at No Man’s Land and Air Studio in London.
It features Anil Prasad from Innerviews (Music Without
Borders) talking to Steven about the inspiration behind the process and the
album in 5.1 sound, and a photo gallery of the sessions. The booklet is one of
a kind and it shows pictures of the character going through the memories of
friends, family, her bedroom, and her the paintings thrown in the black & white photograph.
It is perhaps for me, one of Steven’s finest moment of this
year so far.
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