Incoming: Steven Wilson - 'Hand. Cannot. Erase'

In a journey that began during the touring cycle for 2013’s opus The Raven that Refused to Sing, where the forward-looking Mr. Wilson aired newer music alongside new tracks, we find ourselves facing another release from the messiah figure of prog: Hand. Cannot. Erase.

In contrast to 2014’s Cover Version collection, Wilson has gone for the jugular with a concept album that out-concepts his previous concepts. Where Raven was based on a collection of ghost stories penned by Wilson, his latest offering takes respectful inspiration from the tragic tale of Joyce Vincent, a young woman who had been dead in her London bedsit for two years before anyone found her. 

Despite being a young, attractive woman with enough family and friends, she managed to essentially disappear inside the ocean of the city. Thoroughly affected by this, and a documentary on the subject, Wilson has taken the story as inspiration, concocting something of a musical story with a similar individual as its protagonist.

There’s the concept, but what do we know of the music so far? Kate Bush has been admitted as an influence, and Wilson has cold-watered fears of an overly poppy record by reassuring that Hand. Cannot. Erase. actually encompasses every style of music that can be associated with him – prog fans rejoice.

The first slice from the album was its title track: breezy, ostensibly pop, but like past single Postcard, there is still something about the song that elevates it. Mostly, it’s the knowledge that the song will form a part of a wider tapestry, and the music itself being subtly more than a three-minute wonder. Guthrie Govan lend a gentle, passing guitar lead, further enticing those who were won over by his pitch-perfect playing on Raven, often beautifully filling space and occasionally taking free reign and painting beautiful sonic pictures. His star is in the ascent, and praise is well deserved.

More recently, another track has surfaced: Perfect Life. Fans could perhaps be forgiven for hoping for something a little more musically chunkier, after the airy lark-drama of the title-track. Instead, Perfect Life is a less-is-more statement in understatement, which will probably fall victim to the skip button in time, perhaps unfairly.

First impressions find it to be lightweight and meandering, with Katherine Jenkins as the aforementioned female protagonist reflecting on happy memories she shared with a younger sister, over a drum-machine beat.

Later on, Wilson then reminds you whose name is on the sleeve by singing “We have got the perfect life” several times, while the electronic music gently builds. The piece is starkly beautiful in a way that Wilson is proving more and more adept at, and it remains to be seen how this fits in to the mural of the story, and how it relates to the other songs on the album.

As befalls every album, Hand. Cannot. Erase has now leaked.

 If you can’t hold on until March 3^rd, you’ll know where to look. But Steven Wilson is an individual who takes extra, extra care in crystallising the mundane and presenting it as something extraordinarily beautiful. In examples such as Hand. Cannot. Erase. he presents to the world something far more than a collection of songs; it’s art, pure and far from simple.