There’s something to be said about records that are dropped with a sense of urgency. The new Steven Wilson album didn’t get the year-long stream of singles or hype; no, The Overview felt immediately like Steven reverting to his native language to talk about something that captured his imagination. The album released almost unceremoniously on March 14^th.

Steven Wilson has been on his experimental pop kick for at least three albums now, and I’ve enjoyed them all. He recently mentioned hearing for the first time about “the overview effect”, which is a paradigm shift in thinking that astronauts have reported when seeing the Earth from space; they feel an overwhelming sense of human vulnerability, but also unspeakable awe and innate connection with other humans. Anyways, he seems to have been swept off his feet by the idea, and an album that seems more akin to his Hand.Cannot.Erase. era has emerged. The lineup here is Steven on vocals, guitars, keyboards, sampler, bass, percussion, and programming; Adam Holzman on keyboards; Randy McStine on guitars; and Craig Blundell on drums.

The music here will please fans of Steven’s more progressive rock-oriented albums. There are plenty of spacey guitars and synth, but also grounded piano, drums, and I daresay lyrics. As soaring and sweeping as the music is at times, the lyrics are concretely human with both feet firmly immersed in the everyday human’s experience. There is this wonderful contrast between the cosmic music and the rat race worries and pedestrian concerns that inhabit the lyrics themselves.

And so, this influences how one imbibes the album. There are extended portions of progressive rock, ambient electronic, and something coming suspiciously close to cosmic drone, and the entire record feels like being cast to the interstellar winds of distant galaxies and glowing nebulas. But Steven keeps us here, on planet Earth, as he discusses people losing jobs, becoming sick, worrying about how they will survive in this capitalistic hellscape we’ve created. It’s not a novel idea—I mean, Jet Black Sea released their overview effect album several years ago—but Steven does an admirable job at capturing the inherent paradox of we creatures, existing in the vast glory of this universe, preoccupying ourselves with ordinary, almost meaningless anxieties.

The album consists of two lengthy suites; I like how you can listen to it as two tracks, or as ten. The first suite is the 23-minute “Objects Outlive Us”, and there are some wonderful portions here. The suite opens and closes with hovering introspection; and the middle is filled with human anxieties punctuated by wordless, beautiful, atmospheric instrumentals.  There are some “rock” portions that sound great, but my favorite segments are the last two, “Cosmic Sons of Toil” and “No Ghost on the Moor”; the former is a searing and electronica-laced rock instrumental that sounds fantastic, but it leads into the latter, which is a quiet, hovering affair with a heavy sense of loss and mist.

The second suite is the title track and lasts about eighteen minutes. This is my favorite of the two suites.  This one opens with a terrific ambient electronic exploration called “Perspective” that sets the stage for the acoustic rock “A Beautiful Infinity/Borrowed Atoms”. I like the juxtaposition of those two. The suite then explores a synth-laden, high-energy segment called “Infinity Measured in Moments” with voiceovers that list various types of heavenly bodies—it reminds me of “Staircase” on his last album. The record closes with “Permanence”, pure and unadulterated cosmic space with drifting Blade Runner-blues style saxophone. I absolutely love this ending.

When Steven emerges suddenly to release something without all the bells and whistles of his typical media freight train, it pays to stand up and notice. The Overview isn’t the best album he’s ever made, but it is a pensive and appropriate album for the moment, and the music is beautifully wrought. It takes a few listens to grasp the arc of each suite, but it really works after you’ve had time to process it. Give it a go.

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