Porcupine Tree may be lumped in with neo-prog, but this is no ELP tribute band and you won't hear any Yes covers. There is a constant push, an urgency, in the music Steven Wilson creates to find some place new. The ten minute epic, "Deadwing" kicks off the trip, and doesn't disappoint. Far from the sloppy noodling of songs of this length by so-called jam bands, every note is perfectly placed to compliment those before and after. Adrian Belew lends some stellar guitar to the song as well, and if there were still a place on radio for anything but five minute bursts of fluff, this could be a hit single of sorts. The sound is lively throughout, never getting bogged down by too many electronic effects and instruments. Flourishes of electronica and acoustic instruments are there to add to the overall sound, not to define it. Wilson almost plays at a game of slight of hand here, just when the guitars seem to dominate, some intricate drumming or a piano diversion will creep out of the sound and draw the listener away. Lets not fool ourselves, computers are used, by the bands own admission in the liner notes, extensively. This music isn't meant to sound live in the studio, though, it's delicately crafted and painstakingly written and anything outside of the basic instruments only adds to the experience.

Steven Wilson has the gift of being able to wed intimate sounding music and crashing metallic noise in perfect harmony. "Lazarus" stands in stark contrast to a song like, "Shallow", but they work together perfectly. He makes whole albums sound like "Stairway to Heaven" in the sense that they take wild turns and employ scads of different elements but never sound haphazard or out of sync. Anyone able to blend staccato guitar and blast-beat like drums from track to track must be doing something right. The ultimate success of Deadwing is that it is, from start to finish, completely listenable and engaging. I found myself wanting to stick around for just one more song, at the end of each song, just to find out what was coming next. I've got to imagine the crowds at their shows feature everything from headbangers to hippy waifs doing some kind of butterfly dance. Takes all kinds, I suppose, a fact which Wilson and company seem to understand completely.