Been looking forward to this one, finally gave it a listen, here's some thoughts.
This is nothing I'd really ever expect to come out of Steven Wilson's catalogue. Someone on rateyourmusic said it best, it's like Slowdive's Pygmalion meets Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden. Unfortunately, Spirit of Eden is basically this album but worlds better and kind of did the same vibe of this record before this one actually came out, but I digress. Really any post-rock talk talk release is kind of setting a impossibly high bar for music like this so saying that Spirit of Eden is a better record isn't surprising. Most would probably say Pygmalion is a better record too, but I find it to be rather inconsistent. Anyways enough babble about how it compares to other releases,
how good is the music that's actually here?
To answer that question, it's great. Surprisingly emotive Ambient Pop with a nice bleak atmosphere and good songwriting to back it up. The vocals are good, not great, but good and are honestly very fitting for the vibe of this album. The tracks flow in and out very nicely and the transitions are stellar. "All the Blue Changes" is definitely the highlight here. It's got an amazing progression and climax and is definitely something I will be coming back to. The first track is great too. I find the last track on this thing, "The Break-up for Real" to be kind of dissappointing though. It doesn't need to be there and feels like filler more than anything else.
Mix wise, this thing is of course incredible. I mean, it's a Steven Wilson 5.1 mix, he never misses. It's very discrete while never sounding unbalanced, and I found the mix to be surprisingly experimental on this one, more so than other releases I'd say. I think the prime example of this is the track "The City in a Hundred Ways". The saxaphone slides from one speaker to another, which is pretty risky but came out very nice in my opinion. Steven Wilson has a incredible ability to mix and master his stuff always exceptionally well, and if anything this is one of the best examples of that. The 5.1 mix brings the atmosphere up to 11 and genuinely makes it a essential release in my collection.
This is great and all but it begs the question, do I reccomend this?
To a non surround music fan, eh, maybe? The main trouble with this release is that it's so similar to Talk Talk's "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock" and those releases are such incredible classics that it's nearly impossible to beat. Even other Post-rock/Ambient Pop classics such as Sigur Ros' releases kind of do the same thing as this album. I'd say if you aren't a surround music person but you enjoyed those releases this would be a good next pick, which in that case I can recommend this.
To a surround music fan, absolutely. There isn't really any competition (unfortunately) for this type of stuff in the 5.1 music world. I'm a lot more interested in this stuff than prog and classic rock releases, even though I definitely do appreciate some good ol' prog and some boomer music. The mix here is stellar and even if the music isn't quite at the top of the post-rock/ambient pop world, it's still definitely a great release and shouldn't be missed music wise.
I'm gonna give the music a 8 and the mix a 10 for a overall rating of a 9.