Porcupine Tree: Great Expectations

The true horror, very often, lies very deep within all of us, and I believe one of the things about being an artist is you have to allow that to surface. Of course, many people bury it, but we all have this inside us – we ALL have this inside of us – and one of the things about being an artist is to allow this to surface without driving you crazy.

-Steven Wilson

I appreciate that as a songwriter you're willing to delve into darker material. You don't flinch at much, and perhaps even make others flinch at times. You don't do this in a melodramatic way, but you've dealt with some heavy subjects. I think The Incident shows even further growth as a lyricist, where some pretty deep stuff is handled in a fairly approachable manner.

Porcupine Tree by Grzegorz Chorus

One of the tricks with writing lyrics is you have to make the person listening feel they're believable and sincere. The problem with a lot of music that deals with dark lyrical matter – and I'm talking mainly about metal – is you just don't believe it. It's very cartoony, and I think we've become desensitized to the whole darker side of life by horror films and metal music. The true horror, very often, lies very deep within all of us, and I believe one of the things about being an artist is you have to allow that to surface. Of course, many people bury it, but we all have this inside us – we ALL have this inside of us – and one of the things about being an artist is to allow this to surface without driving you crazy.

It can be quite depressing and quite hard when I'm working on the music. I do get into a space where I feel a lot of negative vibes – but I don't want to get too New Age-y about it [laughs]. At the same time, it is like a catharsis or an exorcism to get this stuff out. People are always surprised when they meet me that I'm not this morose, depressed, miserable figure. I consider myself to be quite happy, but you're right, my lyrics do dwell on some quite sick corners of the human psyche. But I guess that's in all of us; we're all aware of it on some level. Anyone who sits down and watches the news for ten minutes absorbs it, whether they realize it or not. So, for me, it's almost a kind of catharsis to try and write about all that bile and stuff in songs. Hopefully people find it paradoxically beautiful and uplifting.

There's a huge emotional well to your band's music. That was what first drew me in, before I even began to appreciate the musicianship or even the lyrical content. It always seems like you're drawing from a very deep place. You don't seem to do casual well.

Steven Wilson - Porcupine Tree

I don't like fantastic lyrics. Let me explain what I mean by that. One of the clichés that goes along with the sort of music we supposedly play – art rock, prog rock, whatever – is the lyrics are supposed to be about starships or hobbits, and I don't do that. I write very autobiographically from a deep, personal place. Most of my songs are somehow connected with relationships and how they've fucked me up, or my childhood and how that fucked me up. And that all comes back around to the sense of believability and credibility the songs seem to have. It's something anyone can relate to; we all have this shared human experience where we wander around asking about things.

It all becomes about the personality of the person writing the music. How many songs have been written about love? Millions, yet we never get bored hearing love songs. If you have a fresh perspective on it then it can still be fresh. I love words. I grew up reading a lot of books and I love playing with words. I think there's a lot of interesting ways to deal with subjects using words in a really fresh way, not relying on the clichés and platitudes you hear in most love songs. There's a song I like called "Drawing The Line" [off The Incident], which uses not flowery but quite elaborate language and beautiful images, and it's a love song. That's what it is at the end of the day.

You write some fairly complex music, especially for a field like rock 'n' roll. The studio is one thing, where you can tweak and adjust to your heart's desire, but do you ever think to yourself, "My lord, how are we going to pull this off in concert?"

Every single time I think, "What the fuck are we going to do to make this work?" And [The Incident] was no exception. Every time it gets a little bit harder, not necessarily more complex musically but, getting back to that idea of the architecture, more complex in the way it flows. We're trying to perform the whole of The Incident, which is the first disc of the new album, with only one pause for breath. Just logistically, I change instruments about five times in the first 20 minutes, from piano to electric guitar to baritone guitar. Every five seconds it seems like my guitar tech is bringing me a new instrument. So, there are a lot of logistical complexities in presenting long, continuous suites of music. I think that's where it gets hard.

In terms of the music itself, it's not complicated. The complexity is in the structure. If you take any individual part of Porcupine Tree music they're quite simple. I'm not capable of writing music in the style of Gentle Giant or Frank Zappa. I write simple songs, simple melodies.

I appreciate that there's a bit of gut-punch to your music, a bit of snarl. A good portion of the music you're lumped in with – rather wrongheadedly, I may add – can be a touch genteel. I think there's a value in having some rough oomph, especially when you crank it up. Porcupine Tree can be quite visceral, where it's not totally thought out and the music pours out in a purely emotional way.

Porcupine Tree

Totally, totally! I don't like music that's too intellectual, too exquisite. That's actually not true. I do like some of that music, but I don't like to make that kind of music. When it comes down to it, the music that's really touched me over the years has found a middle ground between great melody, great songwriting, great emotional kick or resonance AND some degree of sophistication in the music and production - King Crimson, Pink Floyd, The Beatles – obviously – The Beach Boys. For me, the classic album artists straddle that line rather nicely. I like to think that we've found an area that's somehow unique. We've done things in the tradition of what other bands have done but found our own little sound, our own little personality, our own little corner.

You're the germ of this music but I'm curious what the other guys in Porcupine Tree bring to the table.

Well, I really don't consider myself a musician. I'm a songwriter, and I guess I'm in charge of the philosophy of the band. The ideology of the band came from me because it started as a solo project. But, I've never been about being technically gifted. For me, an instrument is a tool. I'm about to do an interview with Guitar Player magazine and for me that's a bit like interviewing a writer and asking him about the pencils he uses. It seems ridiculous to me. On the other hand, I do hear in my head things that are quite musically sophisticated, so I need to work with musicians that are very gifted at fleshing out my very basic ideas. That's where the other guys come in.

I don't tell Gavin what to play on the drums. I don't tell Richard what sounds to play. They come up with these incredible things that make the music, flesh it out and give it the level of detail where you can listen to it 50 or 60 times and still be hearing things you didn't hear the first 50 times. Richard is really the secret weapon in our band. He's totally unique. No one else could come up with those sounds. It's almost because he approaches keyboard playing in terms of pure texture and pure sound and not technique and chops. We're all about texture and sound in Porcupine Tree.

Porcupine Tree is on tour now; dates available here.