In his fourth solo album the highly productive British prog mastermind brings forth the history of a young woman ‘lost’ in a big city, recreating her memories and suffering from being alone. The album’s storyline is based on a real woman, who was found in her London flat a few years (!) after she had died. Having had friends and family, having been attractive and intelligent apparently did nothing to stop her from being simply forgotten by everyone. This struck a chord with Steven Wilson, who offers us now his own vision of a lonely person living in a crowded city, seemingly in touch with the whole world via the social networks, yet in reality truly alone and abandoned.
Unlike the predecessor album, ‘The Raven That Refused To Sing’, the effort in question is markedly more accessible, even ‘pop’ at times. At least two of its songs, ‘Perfect Life’ and ‘Hand.Cannot.Erase.’, are easy-to-hum and straightforward to qualify as radio hits, but one should only read their lyrics to make out a second bottom in them… What seems easy listening at first, at subsequent spins reveals itself to be very subtly written and engineered music, effectively conveying a variety of moods, going from quiet and touching to harsh and explosive and piercing in an instant. As a long-time Wilson fan I can testify that a happy tune by Wilson is merely a tool to deliver a very short-lived elation or even frustration with the world on a character’s part, not something to make you want to dance to…
It’s quite hard and probably unnecessary to single out stand-out songs on this record, as each track here falls into its right place to deliver the message of the album. Nonetheless, I can’t help being especially enchanted by some tracks a bit more than by others. One such masterpiece is ‘Perfect Life’ – a song half-consisting of a narrated story about how the protagonist met her older sister years ago, and how they had had ‘a perfect life’ together, before the elder sister disappeared. The apparent simplicity of the drum machine background and the beauty of the melody make the narrative so much more intense than could have been achieved by complex arrangements and elaborate playing.
A lush nine-minute piece called ‘Routine’ offers each of the band members and the guest female singer Ninet Tayeb a perfect chance to shine each in their own respect. It has an air of hopeless despair permeating every routine minute of the woman’s life, with Tayeb ending her part with a shrill cry instantly (and probably consciously) reminiscent of Floyd’s ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’.
The instrumental ‘Regret#9’, another one of the highlights in my opinion, makes for a great chance for the band to sound as a whole, with pianist Adam Holzman’s keyboard solo at the beginning setting in a somewhat melancholy mood. Guthrie Govan shines as usual with his trademark guitar sound, a real treat to the ears, making for just the right kind of culmination in the songs.
I’ve expanded just on the few songs which are, in my opinion, noticeable standouts on the record, however, all of the items on the album have their fitting place on it and they should be taken in as a continuous flow of a musical journey to be able to really deliver.
As a conclusion, ‘Hand.Cannot.Erase.’ is so much more than just a prog record ‘for all’. It is a clearly laid out and directed musical journey that has the power to sweep away and lets the audience sort of get inside the protagonist’s head and tough out some hardships with her. A boy choir (never used before by SW in his musical palette) and Ninet’s dramatic singing add something that’s hard to pinpoint at first, but which hits the spot precisely on an album about a lonely female lost in her memories and a big and indifferent city. The emotions will take over the lonely young woman and desperation will surface. But as you sit and listen to the record from start to finish (it will make for a much more cohesive experience if you do it non-stop!), you go through a generous lot of the character’s moods, thought change and reveries of childhood and family, and you can’t help feeling for her suffering and pain. There’s no need for odd time signatures and stand-out overcomplicated drum solos on a record such as this. With a poignant musical language it does precisely what music is supposed to evoke first and foremost: feelings. And the perfectly crafted ‘Hand.Cannot.Erase’ serves this purpose very well indeed. At the end, though, it ends on a pretty vague note as we are left wondering what is going to befall the young loner after all - and there may be options, from suicide to her slowly finding her way back to re-unite with her family and friends. This is the kind of ending that the later Porcupine Tree albums have been known for: no solution offered, but just a poignant observation of how things are in this world. Will experiencing an album like this one make us be kinder to those around us we regard as freakish and weird? It well might…
Put simply, this is a Wilson that’s easy to recognize and see the roots, with many a ‘snapshot’ from the Porcupine days, but that’s a new and unexpected kind of Wilson too, and very much so. ‘Hand.Cannot.Erase’: meet a record that’s destined to win the dedicated and the newly initiated hearts alike and, unlike its lady protagonist, is very unlikely to fall into oblivion, in any big city out there.
