Steven Wilson is a name you've absolutely heard of before if you have even just a passing interest in modern progressive rock music. I'll save the rigorously-compiled Steven Wilson career background for when I dip into his solo output probably in errrrrrrrrrrr 2036, but for now I must point out that the man will be turning 50 at the end of this year and he doesn't look a day older than a supple, rosy-cheeked and stubbly Lisa Loeb (who is turning 50 next year). Wait, I guess that's not really my point. What I mean to say is the dude looks damn young, but he's been around for nigh on 30 years now and has been involved in many musical projects and even more collaborations and even more album productions. He's a workhorse, one of the most respected individuals in progressive rock history, and has a sexy vegetarian body and lusciously long hair. Wait, whoops haha, hold on.
Anyway, the guy has esteemed credentials and an elaborate past, but for now I'll stick to his work with respect to Porcupine Tree only. The very humble beginnings of Porcupine Tree date back to 1987 when it was just a duo with Wilson and his buddy Malcolm Stocks. They were a couple of Pink Floyd fanboys who were interested in creating a joke band with its own joke mythology. Wilson was working on a project called No-Man at the time, so Porcupine Tree served as a silly, fun distraction for him. Somewhere along the way Stocks moved on to other projects, perhaps because he was tired of hanging out in Steven Wilson's parents' basement, so Wilson kept it going by himself. Between 1989 and 1991 two full-length demo cassettes of music were released after Wilson considered the possibility that his project might be entertaining to other people: Tarquin's Seaweed Farm and The Nostalgia Factory.
Long story short, Wilson had gotten in touch with a dude named Richard Allen, a writer for an underground British music 'zine, who enjoyed these demo tapes. After founding Delerium Records and signing on Wilson as a co-founder, Allen coerced him to officially release some of this existing material. Hence, therefore, hither and yon and never mind the bollocks eh wot, On the Sunday of Life compiled the very best material from the two cassette tapes Steven Wilson recorded in his joke band Porcupine Tree and it was released as a small run of 1000 copies to the public in 1992.
That's all well and good, but Steven Wilson ain't funny, man. Go ahead and Google him right now. I'll wait. Yes, yes, I know that you too want to lick chocolate off of his sinewy nerd body, get past that for a second. Take a look at every picture of him and make a note that it looks like it would literally kill him to crack a smile. Make a note that it looks like he's about to ask you to allow him to read you the gothic poetry he wrote back in 10th grade during algebra class. He looks like a man who would never tickle your funny bone, unless "funny bone" was a euphemism for something else and he was doing it very inappropriately in the back of the room during a Periphery concert. And, lo and behold, let this guy run loose with his alleged sense of humor and out comes On the Sunday of Life from the hilarious joke band of crack-ups and goofabouts. Surprise! It isn't at all funny. And that's just the first problem with it!
Let's completely forget the fact that this album is meant to be a joke and weigh the artistry on the merits of actual musicianship. Actually, fuck that for a second, did you see the duration of this thing? Nearly 76 minutes for a debut album from the early '90s? Unless your joke band is Ween and your 76-minute early '90s debut is GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, you're completely out of line trying to subject the public to such a bloated monstrosity of tepid mediocrity, ok? Are we clear there?
I personally wouldn't call any of Porcupine Tree's output "progressive rock", even though it's labelled and is widely recognized as such. Most of the discography lacks the excess associated with the genre: half-hour long keyboard solos, emotionless angular noodling, overwrought pseudo-profound lyrics about fairies and elves (and any musings into the territory of excess are, thankfully, fairly restrained. Definitely a noteworthy skill). Throughout its history there were certainly distinct periods, and the earliest Porcupine Tree albums fall more into the category of psychedelic rock music. Again, Steven Wilson is big Pink Floyd guy, and one of the most influential albums of all time to his career was Tangerine Dream's Zeit (a big ol' bloated work of boring, drone-y 19-minute sound collages and snooze anthems), so this influence is dripping all over the place until at least Signify, three albums later, which sees Wilson starting to come into his own. Until then it's all very much a disposable '60s space rock reproduction. Besides the unoriginality, On the Sunday of Life suffers especially from a lack of thematic continuity, making the individual tracks feel extremely inessential. The album is like a diorama of immature, half-baked sound clips cobbled together quickly and messily before the class bell rang. Even the title is a cringe, it sounds like a decadent bit of pot-infused 15-year-old wisdom.
I can start with the actual songs, because on this 18-track hodge-podge there really aren't many good ones. "Jupiter Island" is promising enough with its psychedelic-garage guitar work and ethereal high-pitched vocals, leading the listener on into thinking the rest of the album is going to be enjoyable. The catchy repeating chorus of "Come on let's fly to Jupiter Island-uh" just packs unrelenting playful whimsy in your ears! "The Nostalgia Factory" might be the best song of the lot, featuring a cool krautrockin' beat with interweaving guitar passages and even a (non-excessive) proggy keyboard solo. But then there's also "Radioactive Toy", a very engaging ten minutes where Wilson breathily muses about atomic bombs for bit before launching into a nice psychedelic jam. "Nine Cats" feels like familiar territory for fans well-versed in the later years of Porcupine Tree, as does "As the Swallows Dance Above the Sun" and "This Long Silence". Gothic moodiness in what feels like infinite space; Wilson has a knack for creating atmosphere, and it's nice to know that he's already fairly competent at it this early on.
Some of the songier songy songs do fall kind of flat. "Queen Quotes Crowley" reuses the psychedelic krautrock progression heard a few times already, this time with sampling experiments, and nary a hook to be found. The album's closer "It Will Rain for a Million Years" feels even more superfluous with all the other similar jams that came earlier, leaving you antsy for the album to just be over and done. "Linton Samuel Dawson" is basically "Jupiter Island Pt. 2" with its acid rock synth breakdowns and high-pitched vocals. I just gotta bring up Ween again with this one, because "Linton Samuel Dawson" sounds like a Ween song (and maybe it's because of this resemblance that I'm willing to call it humorous), especially at the end where it's proclaimed that Linton Samuel Dawson "aids escape to tranquility/from the boredom of mankind". He keeps riffing on those last five words in that modified helium-addled voice until the concept seems completely ludicrous. Now that's satire!
The rest of the album is pure filler. Ambient experiments and heady psychedelic excursions serve as, presumably, transition pieces between the real songs. But there's too many of them, and more often than not it's all vastly uninteresting. You can forgive the nearly three-minute "Music for the Head", which acts as a throwaway introduction in the same vein as how any other typical art rock album could possibly kick off, but others overstay their welcome with similarly overlong mindless free jazz and dull droning such as "Third Eye Surfer" and "Begonia Seduction Scene". "Space Transmission" is a spoken-word poetry piece that doesn't feel nearly as important as it's supposed to. Shorter transitions are annoying in their mere existences on the record ("Message from a Self-Destructing Turnip", "Hymn", and "No Luck With Rabbits"). It all makes up nearly 20 minutes of the album's real estate, which is unforgivable for a debut that's already packed to the gills. Lose that and you've still got about an hour's worth of music to continue trimming down.
Feh. Don't even bother. Even the best tracks on On the Sunday of Life pale in comparison to any of the great tracks yet to come in the later years. Spin it once out of sheer curiosity, save your favorite tracks in a playlist (there will be, like, three), and never revisit it again.
And by the way, Pink Floyd already is "Jokey" Pink Floyd, Steve-O. They were very sneery and silly in their beginnings too. God Damn it's a good thing you got better as time went on.
KINDA BAD
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