steven wilson - hand.cannot.erase.

I've been playing virtually nothing but Steven Wilson's new album Hand. Cannot. Erase. and associated tracks for the past couple of weeks.

 

The album comes in a bewildering array of formats, all of which contain different tracks - demos, out-takes, instrumental versions, remixes - all to be found across the regular CD, deluxe CD/DVD, Blu-Ray, super deluxe book edition etc... Whatever versions you want however, this is an album that is well worth getting hold of.

 

The album itself is very loosely based on the true story of a woman who gradually withdrew from the world, despite living and working in London. She lost contact with her family and her friends and then seemed to vanish. People assumed she'd just moved away, but due to a combination of benefits continuing to be paid in and rent continuing to be paid out, no-one realised that she'd died in her flat, with the TV still on and Christmas presents for her brother's kids still half wrapped. No one seemed to miss her and her body wasn't discovered for over two years! 

 

The songs on Hand.Cannot.Erase. don't actually tell the story of this woman, but some are clearly inspired by the way she withdrew from contact with the world. The best place to hide is in the busiest city. No-one will notice you if you don't want to be noticed. So we get songs of regret, of sad childhoods, of lonely people - but surprisingly this is in no way a miserable album. There's an excitement and a buzz about it, lots of electronic textures that set it apart from the retro prog of Wilson's previous album, and above all some of the songs are solidly, joyfully commercial sounding.

 

The title song mixes the catchy, snappy sound of one of Wilson's other bands - Blackfield - with the punchy anthemic rock of bands like Manic Street Preachers - and it's superb. It's immediately followed by the trip-hoppy sound of "Perfect Life" as the female protagonist of this album reflects on an idyllic part of her childhood when her parents adopted another girl who introduced her to Dead Can Dance, Felt and This Mortal Coil - although it's obviously not actually taken from Steven Wilson's own life there's clearly a strong autobiographical strain running through this.

 

There are longer pieces, twisting and werning their way through various Prog influences. "3 Years Older" starts off with Pete Townshend "Substitute" like chords, but mutates into something like late 70s Rush before veering off at another tangent altogether. The demo version of this song even uses part of the wonderful No-Man song "Truenorth" at one point. But it would be entirely wrong to say that these songs merely nick stuff from their influences. The sources are clear at times but Wilson does so much with this inspiration that every song soars and changes into something new and fresh and exciting and genuinely thrilling. The use of female vocals on a couple of tracks adds considerable depth. This is not just prog rock - despite what the reviews might say - there's so much more to Steven Wilson than that.  

 

The final track, "Happy Returns", is arguably the best. The lyrics may seem inocuous on first listen, merely a letter to an estranged brother, but the words are deceptive and there's a heartbreaking sadness in this song that's deliberately left unresolved in the final line "I'll finish this tomorrow" which precedes some truly stunning and highly emotional guitar work. The coda to this is titled "Ascendent Here On…" which might point to the lonely death of the woman, but the website that accompanies the album also hints at something else, something rather surprising after the very humdrum and very human story that has gone before. The diary on the website details the fictional life of this woman and about halfway through there are the first oblique mentions of 'visitors'. My understanding of this was that the woman was slipping in paranoia and perhaps schizophrenia and that her mind was wandering due to her self imposed isolation. But the final pictures on the site, published the day the album was released, show what seem to be glowing lights in the sky, perhaps UFOs, accompanied by the words Ascendent Here On… Wilson has said in a couple of interviews that the story might not actually be exactly what it seems and when one interviewer suggested a sci-fi element to the loose story Wilson said something like 'perhaps…' so who knows? It’s deliberately vague and open to all sorts of interpretations. 

 

What remains certain however is that the album is a real masterpeice of modern rock and the bonus tracks add much to this. The demos are sufficiently different to be very worthwhile hearing, with two tracks that never made it to the album itself (one of which is just gorgeous). The instrumental versions of the songs are more than just the pieces with the vocals removed. Quite differently mixed and with alternative overdubs and instrumentation in places - again well worth hearing. And finally a few alternate takes and a couple of radio edits for "Hand Cannot Erase" and "Happy Returns" - is Wilson being a tad optimistic expecting radio play? If there was any sense in the world then these two songs, at the very least, ought to be on radio playlists. With all the acclaim and publicity he's getting for this record then is it possible, 25 years into his career, that he could actually get noticed by the general public? Stranger things have happened.