Blistering.com: You did the tour [with Opeth] a couple of years ago, the concert hall sort of tour. Since this whole series of collaborative efforts started, have you witnessed a shift in your fan base? Wilson: Well, there certainly are more metal kids coming to the shows now. I don't know if that's necessarily just to do with Opeth, or just to do with the band becoming more metal anyway. We're getting a lot more play on rock stations, so for sure I think that has changed.
Blistering.com: Do you see any kind of conflict now between the old stalwart Porcupine Tree fans and the metal kids that you're talking about who are coming to the shows? Wilson: I think there is a sense that some of our older fans do resent the fact that we have gone in a heavier direction and they consider it somehow to be a betrayal of sorts. But that's... that's age-old, isn't it? Every band that develops and every band that continues to grow and to have its audience grow... you always get the allegations of selling out, compromising and all that bullshit, but it really is just that - bullshit. I can't take it too seriously.
A majority of our fans, I think, have stuck with us and welcome the fresh blood and fresh energy. The shows are getting bigger, the audiences are getting more diverse, the reaction is getting more enthusiastic at the shows. All those aspects make it more fun, really. For the old fans and the new fans alike.
Blistering.com: I actually remember the time I saw you guys at the Berklee Performance Center, I think that may have been one of the first shows that you guys played to a sort of metal audience, and I remember one of the first things after coming on stage was throw the horns up. Wilson: [laughing] Okay, there you go. There's a touch of irony in there. But the thing is, I grew up with metal music. The first music I really got into when I was a kid was New Wave of British Heavy Metal stuff - bands like Maiden, Saxon and Diamondhead, and albeit a lot those aspects of my sound kind of went... below the surface for a few years, but I've never really fallen out of love with it. The metal scene... it was great to discover a whole new group of experimental metal bands that inspired me to go down that route again myself. But you know, the one thing I've never felt is that Porcupine Tree could ever be generic in any way. We could never be a generic metal band any more than we could be a generic progressive rock band, or a generic ambient rock band. I don't think it's any more accurate or any less accurate to call us any of those things. We still just exist as Porcupine Tree. But I guess we realize that we have certain parts of our audience now that are coming from a kind of generic metal fan base, which is great - we're happy to have them on board.
Blistering.com: Speaking of experimental metal bands, what have you heard recently from that genre that's excited you? Wilson: I really like all the Southern Lord stuff. Do you know that stuff - Khanate, Sunn O))), Boris - all those bands?
Blistering.com: Yah, I'm familiar with most of them... Wilson: Really extreme doom metal bands.
Blistering.com: I can't say I'm a fan of most of that stuff... Wilson: Well, I'm really into it right now. And also I like Meshuggah a lot, and Isis, Mastodon... the more interesting, intelligent type of metal bands, you could say...
Blistering.com: With those Southern Lord bands... a lot of them are really minimalist... Wilson: Yah, I love that. I love a lot of drone type stuff. Those sort of extreme drone, very repetitive, very long pieces. I've always loved that.
Blistering.com: The thing that's always struck me about music like that is that there isn't so much effort, seemingly, put into the writing process there. Do you think... Wilson: I think that's really the wrong way to look at it in terms of writing. For me a lot of that doom stuff is really an extension of electronic drum 'n' bass music, and I like a lot of that, too. Music that doesn't involve guitars, but involves creating a lot of textures and drones, and it's close to ambient. I think a lot of the doom bands are kind of combining that with metal. So the actual writing is less important than the atmosphere, and the texture, and the fabric of the sound. I just like to immerse myself in those kinds of atmospheres and sounds. It's a kind of sound that stirs the whole room for an hour, or whatever.
Really, I think you're right. I think that writing isn't necessarily their strong point. But I don't think that that's their focus.
Blistering.com: When you write a song, what's the first thing that you consider when you go into a writing session? Wilson: It's really hard to answer this question because there is no... people are always asking me... There are no rules, you know? I write songs on guitar, I write songs on piano, I write songs based on a drum loop, I write songs based on a bass line, I write songs based on a lyric, songs based on a sample or a sound. There really can't be anything... so it's really hard for me to answer that question. There is no - what I would call a typical M.O. for writing a Porcupine Tree song. The only thing they really have in common is that I write almost everything in a very negative frame of mind - when I'm feeling down or melancholic. That's the only thing they have in common. I don't write when I'm feeling happy or artful, you know. It's usually always some kind of exorcism or cathartic process, writing a song - trying to get something negative out of my psyche in that respect.
Blistering.com: I definitely hear kind of a darker tone with the last three or four albums, maybe. To be honest, I'm not particularly familiar with the early material. I have the 'On the Sunday of Life' album... that's the earliest thing... Wilson: That's the first album. That's very different. That was in the time when it was really very much pastiche and saturated in seventies psychedelia and seventies rock. The last two or three records probably are the ones I would push anyone new to the band to, anyway, so that's cool.
Blistering.com: But let's say, a song like "Lazarus" from the new album. That strikes me as more of an upbeat sort of sound. Wilson: Actually, you're pretty off there. That's a very melancholic song. I mean, in terms of sound, it is 'pretty', yah, with the acoustic guitars, harmony vocals, piano. But it's really quite a sad song. It's basically a love song from a mother to a child, but the mother is dead, so it's from beyond the grave. So actually it's extremely dark in terms of subject matter. But I think the song itself is quite pretty and quite a beautiful song.
Blistering.com: Really, though, wouldn't you say that this new album, in terms of tone, isn't quite so brooding as 'In Absentia'? Wilson: Possibly so. The last album was more about dark things. This album is more about... actually it's based on a film script, and the film script has both light and shade in it. And it's more dreamlike in that respect.
Blistering.com: What is this film script? Wilson: It's a film script I wrote with a film maker friend of mine a couple of years back. The script is kind of a surreal ghost story, very supernatural, very dreamlike, very melancholic, very atmospheric. We haven't made [the film] yet, but we're hoping to make it if we can get some funding at some point. The album is mostly inspired by that script.
Blistering.com: The lyrics to this album aren't printed... I mean, there are bits and pieces, but they're not fully printed in the album sleeve this time. What made you decide to do that? Wilson: I really don't believe that lyrics should be read divorced from the music. I don't believe lyrics should be experienced outside of the fabric of the music. I think the words are there to be listened to with... You know, so often I think people will print the lyrics just because that's what they're expected to do, but most lyrics are not worthy of being printed. They don't read off the page and they shouldn't be experienced outside of the music. I like to put some work into my lyrics and I try hard to make them interesting, but I still don't believe that people should read them as some sort of stand-alone poetry. Ever since the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper', there's been this consensus that you must print lyrics in an album sleeve - why? Lyrics are not poetry, they are part of the fabric of the music.
If people really want to read the lyrics, they can go to our website and they can see them there. That's my sort of concession to those people. Otherwise, I've always been reluctant to print my lyrics, and this is the first time I've been brave enough to say, "fuck it, I'm not gonna print the lyrics. Let's make the artwork conceptual, let's make it look good, rather than just a backdrop and some text." People can listen to them, anyway - they can hear the words on the album, anyway.
Blistering.com: But if you have, say, a death metal band that growls all its lyrics, it becomes a necessity to print them... unless, of course, the lyrics are crass and embarrassing, like with Hypocrisy... Wilson: Well, that's what I mean. You say it's a necessity because you can't hear the lyrics, but if you actually when you do read them, they're shit. Total shit. Just a series of clichés about death and doom and gravestones. I mean, I don't need to read that shit. It doesn't tell me anything about my life. It's not supposed to have any meaning. Even those bands will probably admit to it not being supposed to have any meaning. It's just like painting different colors and textures in words.
Mikael from Opeth is the same, you know. His lyrics don't mean anything. He just paints. We've actually had a bit of an argument about this, because he just creates images without knowing what they mean. I tell him, 'well, why don't you try to make your lyrics mean something?' And he says, 'because a lot of the time I just growl them, anyway, so it doesn't matter.' 'Well, don't put them in the lyric book!', you know. It's a whole area that I have strong feelings about. I don't believe a lot of lyrics are worth reading, or worth printing, and I kind of include my own lyrics in that. That's the answer to your question.
Blistering.com: I know you said that there's no set process, but what usually comes first, a sound or a lyrical theme, when you decide to write something? Wilson: It's difficult... In terms of actually getting the theme of a record, I usually - by the time I come to write a new record, I have a whole notebook full of ideas - just phrases and thoughts and ideas. And usually something, at some point, will begin to coalesce into a direction - something I'll keep coming back to - and that creates the central theme for the record. In terms of music, there's usually one track that becomes the breakthrough for me when I'm writing. On this record, it was the track "Deadwing". Until then I was writing stuff, but nothing really blew me away and I really didn't feel like I had any direction for the record. I didn't feel like I'd done anything new, or there was no real sense of having evolved from the previous album until I wrote that song. And when I wrote it, I just kind of said to myself, 'yah, that's it, that's the hook that the rest of the record is going to hang on.' I can't explain why or when that happens, but sometimes it feels like you're just bashing your head against a wall - sometimes for months at a time, writing stuff, not feeling particularly strong about any of it, but always kind of trusting that that breakthrough will eventually come, and that was the breakthrough for me this time around, the title track.
