You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.
Bowness’s partnership with Steven Wilson in No-Man and collaborations with Robert Fripp, Peter Hammill and Phil Manzanera (the latter two instrumental guests here) marks his solo, art-rock terrain.
Stupid Things That Mean The World also recalls prog – not in musical expansiveness (some tracks barely last a minute), but nostalgia for English pasts, and innocence lost.
The Great Electric Teenage Dream mourns devotion to rock itself (‘once a record/now an unpaid stream’), while Soft William is among songs of domestic tragedy and urban despair that recall Wilson’s true-life concept album about a woman’s lonely death, Hand. Cannot. Erase. Bowness’s voice shares an almost sticky-sweet yearning with Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon, softening his sad lyrical blows.
CD buyers get an extra disc including a 1994 No-Man demo and an ambient remix, suiting sharp-edged songs whose music glides prettily by./o:p
