Perfectionism is big ask, especially after six years away. “You get to hear all the fuck ups that no one else on the tour gets to hear,” says Steven Wilson, three songs into his first full solo show since March 2019. “All the wrong notes, all the malfunctioning technology, all the wrong lyrics.” He grimaces. “There’s been plenty of that already tonight. I hope you didn’t notice.”
He’s shouldn’t worry. A Steven Wilson crowd is a forgiving one, especially when they’ve waited this long for his return. This is the opening night of the tour in support of this year’s The Overview album. A combination of Covid, a Porcupine Tree reunion and a creative rush that produced two albums in little over year meant that neither 2021’s The Future Bites or 2023’s The Harmony Codex got the live treatment, which explains the sense of expectancy in the air.
Tonight’s venue is Stockholm’s 1600-capacity Cirkus. This elegant, circular building has the dimensions of a big top, but tonight it feels more like a grand old planetarium – fitting given The Overview’s to-infinity-and-beyond themes. The album itself is a genuine modern classic, a progressive record that actually looks forward rather than back. Musically and conceptually, it’s built to be played in its entirety from start to finish, two 20-ish minute tracks one after the other – a retro notion, but the very definition of to-the-stars modernity in every other respect.
That comes later, during the second part of a show comprising two distinct halves, separated by an intermission (no support act tonight, unlike his four shows at the London Palladium where, amusingly, his openers will be a different comedian each night).
The first set – nine tracks, an hour long – acts as both a reintroduction and a chance to make up for lost time. The opening two songs, The Harmony Codex (from the album of the same name) and King Ghost (from the brilliant yet divisive The Future Bites), have never been played live before. Both are entirely electronic and performed by Wilson standing centre stage, sandwiched between a pair of keyboards, dwarfed by the massive hi-def screen that looms over him, projecting the films that originally accompanied each song. It’s a challenging introduction, visually and sonically, but it works fantastically - King Ghost, in particular, is darker and colder than its recorded counterpart.
The rest of the first half is more traditional, even if ‘traditional’ is relative in this context. Wilson joined by his full band – guitarist Randy McStine, bassist Nick Beggs, drummer Craig Blundell and keyboard player Adam Holzman – as he winds through his solo back catalogue. It’s an exercise in shapeshifting, from Luminol’s twisting jazz-prog to the graceful art-pop of What Life Brings to Harmony Korine’s exhilarating melodic rush. There’s a run of concrete-encased heaviness in the shape of No Part Of Me, Dislocated Day (the sole Porcupine Tree song aired tonight) and Remainder The Black Dog, though it’s first-half closer Vermillioncore that sees them go full rock beast.
Wilson could have done things differently tonight and started by playing The Overview in its entirety, but that would have stripped away some of the anticipation surrounding the show. As he returns alone to usher in the album’s first track, Objects Outlive Us, with a keening, wordless cry, 1600 people fall silent, not so much in reverence as pure focus.
The Overview deserves that focus. It’s an album that demands attention as it drifts and whirls, before taking off for the most distant reaches of the universe. Despite its themes of impermanence and perspective. Objects Outlive Us is oddly playful, shifting from rolling piano and stacked vocal harmonies to breezy if existentially heavy pop-rock to McStine’s next-level guitar solo across its 23-minute duration, all precisely delivered here. The Overview itself is different, a musical moving camera that pulls away from earth into deep space, a disembodied voice (actually Wilson’s wife, Rotem) intoning intergalactic markers along the way.
Throughout, the music is accompanied by a vivid animated film, that runs the gamut of imagery from a little grey alien pulling itself out of a swamp to vast, pulsing, imagined ring nebulae billions of miles away. This being Steven Wilson, the ‘audio’ part of this audio-visual extravaganza is equally impressive, courtesy of a pristine sound system. The overall effect is overwhelming, in the best possible way.
He finishes by hitting the last remaining bases he hasn’t already hit in the shape of the emotive Pariah (from 2017’s To The Bone, featuring duet partner Ninet Tayeb singing from the screen behind him) and the contrasting Ancestral (from 2015’s Hand Cannot Erase), the latter an impressive if existentially bleak climax.
And those fuck ups? Yes, they’re there if anyone is listening out for them. A dropped beat, a wrong note, the out-of-tune guitar that Wilson sends back before What Life Brings. They’ll surely be ironed out within a few more shows, but they prove that nobody’s perfect, not even Steven Wilson. Though tonight comes close.
Steven Wilson setlist: Cirkus, Stockholm, Thursday May 1, 2025
Set 1
The Harmony Codex
King Ghost
Luminol
What Life Brings
No Part of Me
Dislocated Day
Remainder the Black Dog
Harmony Korine
Vermillioncore
Set 2 - The Overview:
Objects Outlive Us
The Overview
Encore:
Pariah
Ancestral
