206. Porcupine Tree
Wembley Arena
11 November 2022
Porcupine Tree, the band that launched a thousand 7/8 riffs and existential crises, finally returned to the stage. They aren’t just any band for me. Steven Wilson is one of my all-time favourite musicians, the control-freak genius who makes despair sound cinematic. And Richard Barbieri who has had his fingerprints on my musical DNA since 1981, pretty much since I first heard his other band, Japan, and decided that icy synthesisers and melancholic, highbrow pop was probably the highest form of art. Add the monstrous rhythmic wizardry of Gavin Harrison, and you’ve got what is arguably prog’s last great trinity.
The plan was simple: my friend and I, brothers-in-prog, comrades-in-metal-complexity, would make this our night of reverent head-nodding. But prog gods are fickle. my friend’s kid went down with whatever new viral variant was circulating through the Petri dish of East London’s primary school system, and he was out.
So, step forward my daughter and my recurring gig plus-one, whose patience has now been tested by everything from Numan’s industrial apocalypse to Tool’s sonic jet engine. She came along, mid–sixth form mocks, visibly exhausted, but determined to soldier through the swirl of middle-aged devotees and fretboard philosophers.
And what a swirl it was. Wembley was rammed with what can only be described as a meeting of Prog Anonymous. Everywhere you looked: grey ponytails, sensible fleeces, tote bags filled with vinyl. It smelled faintly of hi-fi equipment and artisanal IPA. For one night only, this was prog’s promised land.
The lights dimmed, and Wilson emerged, barefoot, minimalist, radiating that calm confidence of a man who’s mastered both compression ratios and the meaning of life. Barbieri stood serene behind a battalion of synths, coaxing impossible sounds from what looked like a decommissioned power station. And when the band launched into “Blackest Eyes”, the years melted away.
Porcupine Tree are a strange and wonderful contradiction. They’re as precise as mathematicians but play with the fury of dust bowl preachers. They make songs about grief, alienation, and mortality sound absolutely thrilling. Tonight was no exception. Tracks from CLOSURE / CONTINUATION: “Harridan,” “Of the New Day,” “Rats Return” filled the arena like a doomsday cathedral. The classics: “Fear of a Blank Planet,” “Even Less,” “Anesthetize” were as massive and immaculate as ever.
For me, it was bliss, for my daughter, however, two hours into a three-hour set, it was an entirely different experience. I glanced over somewhere during “Buying New Soul” to find her half-hypnotised, half-horizontally meditating. The audience was deep into the transcendental zone, middle-aged men weeping into their North Face jackets, wives resignedly scrolling through Instagram, and I knew she had reached a limit.
I leaned in, took her hand gently, and said: “let’s go home.” There was no resistance. Only the faintest look of relief, and perhaps gratitude that she was being rescued before the encore’s inevitable 14-minute polymetric masterpiece.
We slipped quietly out, leaving the die-hards to their deep cuts and celestial noodling. Out in the cold Wembley night, the world seemed calmer, slower, less in 11/8.
Later, when the band released their Closure / Continuation Live triple vinyl, I caught up on the final act I’d missed: the encore epics, the crescendos, the clinical perfection. It sounded stunning. But honestly, I think the version in my memory is better: a night half-heard, half-experienced, shared with someone who’ll one day remember her dad dragging her to see a band that makes melancholy feel like majesty.