Steven Wilson is somewhat paradoxically the least famous famous person you’ll know.
His lack of image stands in direct contrast to his popularity with fans that tend to obsess over his work and scrutinise it like hidden messages broadcast by conspiracy theorists.
Sometimes this sort of stalker-lite behaviour merely translates into restraining orders, but Wilson’s last album To The Bone was critically lauded, reached the top five and was supported by three sold-out gigs at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
If all of this is news to you, it’s probably worth a very edited recap of Wilson’s career to date, which began way back in the late 80s with wonky dance outfit No-Man.
On their dissolution he then founded The Porcupine Tree, who shifted from studio project to fully fledged band and released ten albums between 1992 and 2009 which veered in tone from prog to metal to ambient electronica and back.
Since then, he’s been on a solo mission which has brought with it many of his old fans and that willingness to experiment. The Future Bites is his sixth solo album, its release long delayed from the middle of 2020. That’s it, you’re up to date.
When you’ve got license, you might as well use it. The Future Bites is a high concept album about identity, manipulation and rampant consumerism; it’s supported by an online store selling fictional luxury goods created by the Future Bites Corporation, including rolls of toilet paper and hole punches.
If there were rumblings that To The Bone was a little too AOR (look it up), the jarring into Wilson provides here dispels any thoughts of an easy listening ride. Unself and Self are ying and yang like, the first a sombre minute-or-so which ends with the words ‘love is hell’, the latter made from jarring industrial funk, a mirror once being gazed into that’s ultimately smashed with discordant white noise.
There is a delicate tension to what unfolds after that, between the more rock leanings of Wilson’s past and an embracement of electronic touchstones. On the one hand, Follower is all low end and menacing atmospherics, breaking into a hard-assed guitar solo roughly halfway through then bottoming out into multi-tracked proggyness.
But being a contrarian has its advantages, and there’s no denying that in terms of crafting music with a softer, more melodic, and damn it expert pop orientation. It feels easy as well, the falsetto voice and pastel electronica of King Ghost welcoming, 12 Things I Forgot an encore sing-along in the making, while Man Of The People, about the people who stand behind scandal-hit public figures, is a modernist ballad with all the tenderness and dignity its subjects require.
This oscillation will clearly be dissected by Wilson obsessives, but this record’s spine exists around its two most demanding listens. The nearly ten minutes of Personal Shopper are a club orientated warning against retail gratification (‘Buy for comfort, buy for kicks/Buy and buy until it makes you sick’) featuring a cameo from, of all people, Sir Elton John, while the finale Count Of Unease masters perfectly the weird/awkward/epic qualities of Radiohead.
Will Steven Wilson be more famous than before? The Future Bites’ entreaties to caution and restraint don’t exactly set a populist frame to it, but this is a thinking artist gracefully shifting his audience’s perceptions in gradual terms.
Unlike those it concerns itself with who can’t miss the endorphin blast of recognition, its creator still only seeks a path celebrity made strictly on his own terms.
