227. Steven Wilson
London Palladium
13 and 20 May 2025
Some gigs you just know are going to be a little special. And then there are nights like this, Steven Wilson, the high priest of melancholy, turning London’s most civilised theatre into a cathedral of cosmic introspection, and opening the evening not with a sombre ambient act, but with Al Murray, The Pub Landlord. But let’s rewind.
My daughter and I had made this one a family mission. Wilson’s latest album, The Overview, was space-themed, his prog voyage through the cosmos, which had my daughter, a bona fide astrophysics student and cosmic expert, practically vibrating with excitement. I was equally thrilled, albeit for slightly different reasons. A week earlier, I’d met the man himself at a record shop signing, armed with vinyl for him to sign for both of us. I’d mentioned, with all the subtlety of a proud grandma at a school assembly, that my daughetr was studying space. He smiled, signed, and said, “Tell her not to pay too much attention to the science in the lyrics. Hope she doesn’t mark me down too badly. I’m just a stupid musician. We have no idea what we’re doing.”
We knew from the start this wasn’t going to be your typical night of solemn introspection. Out strolled Al Murray, pint in hand, beaming like he’d wandered into the wrong booking. “So, I’m opening for a prog band,” he declared. “Because nothing gets a crowd going like fifteen-minute songs about the heat death of the universe.”
He was funny, poking good-natured fun at the proggers in the audience, ribbing them about odd time signatures and middle-aged fan devotion. He even quipped that Steven Wilson was “the only man alive who could make a song about nuclear fallout sound sexy.” The crowd laughed harder than they probably had since the last Marillion convention.
When the lights dimmed, the screens flared, and Wilson appeared. Gone were the ghost stories, the fractured marriages and the haunted suburbs. Tonight, we were heading up. The Overview is Wilson’s most cinematic album in years; a voyage through space, time, and wrapped in shimmering electronics and soaring guitar. The visuals, projected across the Palladium’s curved backdrop, were jaw-dropping: swirling galaxies, collapsing suns, fractured satellites, and lonely astronauts spinning endlessly through the void
The set opened with “Beyond the Light,” a pulsing, hypnotic journey through Wilson’s version of cosmic creation, followed by “The Overview Effect”, its chorus swelling like a solar flare. Wilson himself was in glorious form: focused, and slyly funny between songs. The band was exceptional, of course, a small orchestra of precision players including the inimitable Nick Beggs, who could shift from cinematic grandeur to whispering intimacy on a dime.
The highlight, for both of us, was “The Other Side of Nothing,” the centrepiece of The Overview and Wilson’s great space ballad. His voice, half-human, half-hurtling-through-the-void, carried the weight of every lonely astronaut who ever stared back at Earth and wondered if anyone was listening.
After a run through of the album, back to front, it was then a canter through Wilson’s back catalogue of Porcupine Tree and solo albums, completing the evening with the beautiful “Raven That Refused To Sing”, with Jess Cope’s stunning animations playing out on screen
And yet, I couldn’t quite come back down. I loved it so much I did what any sensible person wouldn’t: I went again. A week later, same setlist, different comedian, this time Frank Skinner, opening with deadpan reflections on “being too Catholic for prog.” Wilson, understanding that there would be many in the audience who were doing exactly the same as me, made sure the second half of the set was a different mix of his back catalogue to reward the faithful.
Only Steven Wilson could turn a prog show into an interstellar journey and a comedy night. The Overview might be his most ambitious live experience yet, a heady collision of sound, light, and cosmic melancholy. The man has officially transcended the concept of genre.