Weekly Listen: Hand. Cannot. Erase.

March 18, 2015 / JD Byrne / Leave a comment

Without a doubt, Steven Wilson is the modern standard bearer for progressive rock. Over the course of four solo albums since putting Porcupine Tree on hiatus, Wilson has reached a standard of success other proggers just dream of. All right, he’s not Katy Perry, but his new album, Hand. Cannot. Erase., debut not just in the charts in Europe but near the top of several. For a guy who’s spent the last few years channeling King Crimson, Yes, and a host of other terminally unfashionable bands (while remixing chunks of their back catalogs), that ain’t bad.

What’s more, Wilson’s done by producing four albums that are distinct from each other but still sound clearly like him. Where The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories) fully embraced its 1970s proggy roots, Hand. Cannot. Erase. casts a wider net, harkening back not only to some of the more tuneful bits of Porcupine Tree (think Stupid Dream or Lightbulb Sun) but also other Wilson projects like Blackfield or even No-Man. As a result, the album is more accessible, but no less interesting. Each track, whether it’s an acoustic vocal piece or a frenzied prog workout, is deftly constructed and performed.

The performance comes largely from the band assembled to tour Grace for Drowning (and which made The Raven . . .), with some interesting additions, including a choir and some effective strings (arranged by the ever talented Dave Stewart). Wilson does a lot of work himself, but he leaves the spotlight stuff to others, particularly guitarist Guthrie Govan, who has his usual shreddy self reigned in somewhat, to great effect. There’s even a piece that’s basically spoken word, although I think it’s probably the weakest effort here.

Hand. Cannot. Erase. is a concept album, inspired by the story of Joyce Carol Vincent – a woman who died in her apartment and wasn’t found for three years. She reportedly wasn’t a loner or recluse, had friends and family. Wilson was drawn to the story by wondering how she got there. As a result, this is kind of like Wilson’s run at Brave, the Marillion album inspired by a BBC report about a uncommunicative girl wandering on the Severn Bridge. The album is Steve Hogarth’s attempt to figure out how the girl got there.

The comparison is inevitable and, unfortunately, Hand. Cannot. Erase. suffers for it. Hogarth and company are expert at picking you up and wringing every bit of emotion out of you. You feel for the girl in Brave, even if you never quite understand what went on in her head (there are also some broader swipes at the society in general that might have driven her there). Wilson doesn’t work the same way, preferring a more detached observational approach. He’s very Kubrickian in that way, which isn’t a bad thing (I loves me some Stanley), but it does make for a stark contrast.

All in all, Hand. Cannot. Erase. is another great effort from Wilson. Highly recommended.

Weekly Read: Trigger Warning: Short Fictions & Disturbances

March 4, 2015 / JD Byrne / 1 Comment

Neil Gaiman’s newest book, Trigger Warning, is a collection of short fiction (and a few poems) that, as with most such things (although not this one!), is made up mostly of works that have appeared elsewhere. Moreover, many of these stories were prepared for certain people under certain circumstances and, therefore, might not be the most representative of Gaiman’s original work. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty good collection, rising and falling (as it must) on the strength of each selection.

The works tied to others include stories from the worlds of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who, and Gene Wolfe in addition to stories springing from a photo essay about David Bowie and Gaiman’s wife’s work as a human statue. It’s fun to see Gaiman work within these various confines, such as “A Calendar of Tales,” a series of 12 short short stories (one for each month) based on prompts drawn from readers.

Of those stories the one that stood out most to me was “Nothing O’clock,” the Dr. Who story (set during the Matt Smith/Karen Gillan era). It’s got a hint of “Get ’em Out By Friday” in the setup (aliens buying up real estate) and is genuinely creepy. Gaiman makes good use of the fact that it’s a written story rather than a TV show, a well, with some imagery (and doppelgangers of prominent British folks) that you just couldn’t pull off on screen.

The Holmes story, “The Case of Death and Honey,” doesn’t fare as well. Full confession – I’m not a Sherlock Holmes fan, so I’m not in the target audience. Nonetheless, the minute details of beekeeping that the story used got in the way of the larger story. I know from reading his blog that Gaiman has recently taken up beekeeping, so I can understand the desire to share a new passion, but it just didn’t work.

Of the completely original works, several stand out. “The Thing About Cassandra” also starts out a bit like a Genesis tune (“Me and Sarah Jane” this time) with a guy being stalked by his imaginary girlfriend, but it takes a wicked twist in the end. “Orange” is a great story – of a girl who achieves a kind of malevolent ascendance – told in a really neat way – it’s entirely made up of answers to questions posed to a witness to the events. Meanwhile “My Last Landlady” involves a guy who – well, let’s just say his need for a landlady doesn’t go away because he buys a nice house in the country.

But two originals are the best reason to get this collection. The first, “The Truth Is a Cave In the Black Mountains . . .,” began life as a mixed media thing, with Gaiman reading the story on stage, complete with background illustrations and music from a string quartet. In spite of that, the story – an atmospheric tale of revenge and, well, truth – works really well just on the printed page (or, on the Audible version, with Gaiman narrating). It’s one of those classic Gaiman stories that sounds like it should take place in the real world but thankfully doesn’t.

The second is “Black Dog,” which is not based on the Led Zeppelin tune but rather is a further entry in Gaiman’s own American Gods cannon. Shadow is still wandering, this time finding his way to a pub in the English countryside that, at one point, had a mummified cat built into the walls. He falls in with a couple that has some secrets (naturally) which requires Shadow to get in touch with one of his deific pals. It’s a cracking read, full of weird and chilling little details.

On Influences

February 7, 2015February 10, 2015 / JD Byrne / 1 Comment

In the introduction of his new short story collection, Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman writes that “We authors, who trade in fictions for a living, are a continuum of all that we have seen and heard, and most importantly, that we have read.” This is undoubtedly true of everyone, not just authors, but is has a particular resonance for creative types. For one thing, talking about influences is a good way to suggest to readers or listeners what your own stuff might be like. Except it doesn’t always work that way.

Years ago, when I first started putting music online, I was filling out a profile on the website that included a place for “favorites” that had influenced me. I dutifully laid out an array of my favorite musicians – Genesis, King Crimson, Mike Keneally, Frank Zappa – and then realized that the music I was making didn’t sound a damned thing like any of that. Regardless, somewhere deep in my brain, the synapses triggered by “Firth of Fifth” or “Watermelon In Easter Hay” were leading to the electronic bloops and blips I was pooting forth.

And so it is with writing. On the front page here I’ve got a list of links to favorite writers. It includes old favorites, like Asimov and Adams, and more recent discoveries, like Atwood, Martin, and Banks. I like to think that some of those folks, at least, have had a profound influence on me. But does that mean what I write sounds like them? I hope not.

Part of that is because I’m not sitting down trying to write like anybody else. I suppose if I just wanted to make some quick cash I could try to whip out an imitation Scalzi or Le Guin. But, aside from whether or not I could actually do such a thing, I write because I want to tell my own stories with my own voice. I don’t want to sound like anyone else. Yet, I freely admit that what I do is backed by the work of so many others.

More so, by this point in my 41-year old life, I realize that my brain is such a mush of influences that it would be hard to pinpoint any one of them when it came to a particular story. Everything I’ve read, heard, or seen goes into my stories. Don’t believe me? Check some of the titles in The Last Ereph and Other Stories. If you’re a progressive rock fan, a couple might ring a bell. It’s fruitless to try and figure out what the accurate mix of things is.

Which is only to say that if you look down the links of favorite writers and think, “I like those writers, too” and “I hope he sounds like them,” you’re probably setting yourself up for disappointment. Without those expectations, however, I hope you’ll find an enjoyable reading experience, anyway.