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When Porcupine Tree was referred to as (much to Steven Wilson’s disdain) ‘the new Pink Floyd,’ there was some credence to that. Nowhere in their entire discography is that more true than with The Sky Moves Sideways and the first hint of that should come with a glance at the track listing. The structure of this album is that of the titular epic being split in half as bookends, but having a few shorter songs in the middle—exactly like Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. That’s not even going into the music itself—especially the extended instrumental passages which dominate both phases of “The Sky Moves Sideways,” which takes the Floydian qualities that early Porcupine Tree exhibited before and perfects them.
Additionally, this was almost the first Porcupine Tree album to feature a full band. I say almost because time constraints in the recording studio forced Steven to opt for electronically-programmed drum tracks on the original 1995 release for two songs (“Dislocated Day” and “The Moon Touches Your Shoulder”), but the 2004 remaster had Gavin Harrison record live drums for those songs. Otherwise, both editions of The Sky Moves Sideways had a line-up of Steven Wilson (vocals, guitar, keyboard, taps, programming, and mix engineer), Colin Edwin (bass), Richard Barbieri (keyboards, electronics, and programming), and Chris Maitland (drums).
One final note to make before the review properly begins is that there are three different versions (Original European Vinyl, US release, and 2004 Expanded remaster) of this album that each have different track-listing. To create the version which I am reviewing, I had to do a mix of the track-listing of the European Vinyl, but place “Stars Die” where it was on the US release. If that’s confusing, then this is the only Porcupine Tree album which has this track-listing snafu across different versions.
“The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase 1)” (18:37)
This is one half of what is Porcupine Tree’s longest sustained epic. In fact, some editions of The Sky Moves Sideways contain (on a second disc) an alternate version where you can listen to both phases together. However, that version also alters almost all the lyrics to the song—and not for the better, so I won’t analyze that.
Early on, you can hear a faint voice via samples in three sequential parts. They read, “I don’t understand, my lord,” “In the way of circumstances and background, I had everything an artist could possibly want,” and “It was practically a blueprint.” All three of which convey a sense of expectations which were dashed, with the last entailing that this comes in spite of preparations made to prevent failure. All of this serves to set a mood for the rest of the lyrics…this is not going to be a happy song.
Before the lyrics even begin, there is a long instrumental opening (the first lyrics appear nearly five minutes into the song and the last lyric appears roughly eight-and-a-half minutes in) to unpack.
This song starts with eerie synths, nearly-indiscernable cymbal rolls, various electronic effects, and the aforementioned sample. Then, it goes into near silence just before a cozy-sounding synth pad from Richard Barbieri pulls the listener out of the depths. Soon enough, the rest of the band comes in before the two-minute mark and build upon a jam based upon this rhythm for the next couple of minutes. Various layers of keyboard which can be heard in the background and a guitar solo develop out of this Floydian build-up until the jam crashes out at around the four minute marker. Then, a soundscape sets the scene for some acoustic guitar chords.
We lost the skyline.
We stepped right off the map.
Drifted into blank space
And let the clocks relapse.
Let’s take this line-by-line, shall we? The phrase “We lost the skyline” introduces a sense of disconnect that starts with a removal of the natural world. This disconnect is given another dimension in “We stepped right off the map” in that it’s removed from any spatial fabric…no sense of direction. The action of drifting “into blank space” can entail that this disconnect is via several potential methods: a drug trip, an out-of-body experience, or ESP. But the line “And let the clocks relapse” disorients the speaker’s sense of time. This addition makes it so that the drifting “into blank space” is either through dream logic or through an out-of-body experience. I lean towards dream logic (due to reasons elaborated in later lyrics), but there is a flaw with that—“We” connotes a collective while dreams are felt on an individual level. Unless if this is a dialog between two people who happen to have similar dreams independently. Unlikely, but more unlikely things have actually happened.
A note should also be elaborated upon the music guiding this section of lyrics because they do set the tone and inform how these lyrics should be taken. It’s probably not an accident that the sound of either a funereal synth organ (in the Alternate version) or a melancholic acoustic guitar (original version) is the primary instrument behind the detached tone in which Steven Wilson utters these lyrics. Instead, it’s an ominous sign that informs us that this disconnect is one of tragic division (akin to a line that’ll later appear in “Dark Matter”), not celebration.
We laughed the rain down.
Slow burn on the lawn.
Ghosts across the delta
Swallowed up the storm.
This shifting from the abstract nothingness of the first quatrain into what appears as concrete imagery in the second quatrain is misleading. This misleadingness tips off an attentive listener with the juxtaposition between “rain” and “burn,” but this quality goes further because it proves distinctive of dream logic. For a literary analogue, think of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” and how the seemingly-nonsensical language that Joyce constructed for that book was meant to portray the bizarre and illogical nature of dreams. Granted, these lyrics aren’t as tough of a nut to crack as Joyce’s notoriously-difficult book. However, the point stands that the colorful imagery of this verse doesn’t convey something real, but something unreal. Where else but a dream can rain be laughed down or ghosts swallow up a storm or fire not spread quickly across a lawn?
Remember what I said about disconnect regarding the first quatrain? These lines tacitly reveals why that disconnect warrants tragic touches such as the continued presence of funereal synth organs from Richard Barbieri and a slow-and-plodding drum rhythm from Chris Maitland—the speaker is detached from reality and may/may not be seeking dreams as escapism. In much of Steven’s work, escapism without facing your own problems never turns out well. One example’s found in Fear of A Blank Planet, where the teenage protagonist of that album commits suicide instead of dealing with the myriad of problems (which will be elaborated on in that album’s review) on his plate. With this in mind, this quatrain only intensifies the detachment and places this song’s speaker further down the path of no return.
Sometimes I feel like a fist.
Sometimes I am the color of air.
Sometimes it’s only afterwards
I find that I’m not there.
This is what this song has for a chorus, but there is a lot here. First thing to note is that these are the only lines in the song that Steven delivers in a tone that isn’t detached like in the verses. This indicates that despite the importance of the verses informing an interpretation of the song, the chorus is even more important given how much Steven emphasizes it. As to why Steven emphasizes it, that’s what analysis should uncover.
The first important detail is that each of the three sentences in this chorus begins with the adjective “Sometimes,” which denotes inconstancy. This quality directly relates to each of the three major phrases and modifies what they entail.
The first phrase of note—“I feel like a fist”—has three words to break down: “feel,” “like,” and “fist.” To start with “fist,” (no, there are no fisting connotations to be found in here) that word contains connotations of power—to read that our speaker enacts a power-trip inside his/her/their dreams would not be inconsistent with the rest of the song. However, “like” tempers this by stating that regardless of resemblance, our speaker isn’t a literal fist. But “feel” somewhat reverses that tempering in that it offers a sensory placebo—it doesn’t matter to the speaker whether or not he/she/they (the gender of the speaker is unspecified) is a literal fist, but rather that the power-trip quality of the dreams be preserved. The way that “Sometimes” modifies this line is by acting as a divider between time spent in dreams and time spent in reality—one has our speaker on a power-trip and one does not.
The next line’s major phrase—“I am the color of air”—contains extra-textual evidence that Steven considers it and “I find that I’m not there” to be of heightened importance to that of the rest of the song. That evidence is that those two phrases are the names of two of the four movements of “The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase 1).” As to what this phrase means, consider this contradiction—air is colorless because it’s invisible yet because it’s invisible, it has a chameleon-like quality of being all colors. That it can be everything and nothing simultaneously is a quality usually reserved only for the omnipotent (usually God or gods). That this “Sometimes” divides this means this line entails something similar to the previous one, but it qualifies it further. By claiming to enact God-like powers within his/her/their dreams, the power-trip entailed by the previous line has been given added shape—dreams are where he/she/they can be either a cruel or a benevolent God/god/goddess/non-binary deity.
The phrase “it’s only afterwards/I find that I’m not there” has quite a bit to break down, but the modifier “only afterwards” entails that this is a realization that our speaker discovers too late if at all—a distinction of importance because “Sometimes” implies that there are times where our speaker never discovers it. As for “I find that I’m not there,” one has to begin by asking “Where is ‘there?’” The answer in this case is the dream world. The whole phrase (when “Sometimes” is brought into the equation) seems to entail that the speaker occasionally cannot distinguish between reality and dream after immediately being awoken. While one may ascribe that to grogginess, there’s an unsettling implication that whenever he/she/they dreams, they lose a bit of themselves in the dream-world upon waking up. The song makes no indication whether or not that loss is permanent, making this even more unnerving.
Remember that I brought up that the instrumentation of the verses seemed funereal? For the choruses, that’s another story. The choruses feel larger than life and definitely are the louder sections. Once Steven strums the acoustic chord to usher in the chorus, it’s like a thunderstrike that signals a change in dynamics from the rest of the band.
After the end of the first chorus, there is a brief-and-bluesy guitar solo from Steven. Nothing too special, but it transitions to the next verse.
In the dream dusk,
We walked beside the lake.
We watched the sky move sideways
And heard the evening break.
What marks these lines as taking place as the speaker is waking up is evident from the first phrase. That phrase—“In the dream dusk”—entails that reality begins to dawn on the speaker on this day. But as recurrence of the pronoun “We” suggests, there are some vestiges of dream logic in his/her/their mind because as far as what is known in the song, the identity of this other person remains a mystery—perhaps a companion from his/her/their dreams. As for “We watched the sky move sideways,” that the most concrete image in the whole song was adopted as the name of the song/album should mean that it takes on an emphasized importance—if there were a moment where the speaker embraced reality and turned his/her/their back on the dream world, this line would be that critical moment. That would be a reasonable expectation for an audience to have, but remember what was entailed from the opening sample—that any and all expectations will be dashed no matter how well you take failure into account. Therefore, an even more critical line is “And heard the evening break” because while that describes something typically seen (a sunrise), it claims that our speaker heard it. As we’ve established that he’s/she’s/they’s out of the dream, this undercuts the embrace of reality which the previous line implied—for the speaker, the dream world is an addiction and one that cannot be broken because it informs how he/she/they will perceive reality.
Following that, there’s another chorus. Only this time, the crucial “I find that I’m not there” doesn’t mark being jolted out of the dream. This time, that same line indicates being brought back to sleep—possibly forever considering that there are no lyrics in the rest of Phase 1 or in all of Phase 2 of “The Sky Moves Sideways.” This makes the disappointment expressed in this version of the chorus different to the one expressed in the first chorus—and that difference is one that isn’t immediately felt by the speaker since he/she/they (song doesn’t specify gender) revel in their dreams. But the absence of waking will slowly-but-surely be felt.
After this second chorus, the rest of “The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase 1)” is a ten-minute instrumental that goes through several phases—with equal parts Pink Floyd and electronic music. For the sake of convenience, I’ll address these as their corresponding sections of the suite.
III: “Wire the Drum”
At around 8:25, the beat picks up—but the tempo doesn’t (even if it really does sound like it). The drumbeat keeps the same BPM, but adopts a fast techno rhythm. Meanwhile, Colin Edwin has a brisk and steady bassline that’s in-sync with Maitland’s kick pedals. Barbieri goes utterly ballistic with the various layers of synth he employs here, but then he has a solo at about 9:00, which Steven support with reverberating chords.
Once the song reaches 9:36, bass changes rhythm until other instruments join in slowly. At 10:10, there is a percussion solo played by Maitland which leads into the return of the rest of the band at around 10:45 with a return to the fast techno from earlier. Then, a key change hits at roughly 11:03—forming the bedrock for a guitar solo from Steven. Following this guitar solo (at 12:13), the key signature shifts back to what it was before. Then, Theo Travis (a frequent collaborator of Steven Wilson’s various projects) shows up on flute for a solo—he even has a moment at 12:48 where he gets to solo unaccompanied for a bit.
The ending bit of Theo Travis’s flute solo is over a subdued beat on electronic drums. This lasts until roughly 13:05, when Barbieri’s keyboards hover over the beat that Travis had just played on. This doesn’t last long—at 13:22, the band re-enters primed for a big finish. The ending bit of Theo Travis’s flute solo now becomes a motif of its own while Maitland’s drum rhythms gradually escalate in intensity. All the while, guitar and bass provide slithering riffs that Barbieri’s keyboards glide over. This massive build-up persists until about 14:30, whereupon all instruments crash out and some lingering keyboards end up being the connection to the next movement.
IV: “Spiral Circus”
Being connected to the lingering keyboards from the end of “Wire The Drum,” the fading-in acoustic guitars that can begin to be heard at about 15:22 are the signal that “Spiral Circus” has begun. The keyboards still linger throughout this section, but an acoustic guitar pattern that’s imbued with a delay pedal provides the central motif of this movement. The combination of these instruments makes for a cinematic-sounding finale for the first half of “The Sky Moves Sideways.”
Overall, “The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase 1)” marks both a perfection of the Floyd-esque formula and a moment of unveiling Steven’s x-factor. The former because this is the strongest piece of music that Steven Wilson had made up to this point in his career. The latter because—for all the Floyd-esque touches in the first two movements—the second two movements are left-field choices that differ substantially from what Pink Floyd would’ve done had they written this song.
“Stars Die” (5:01)
Lyrically, there is a focus on impermanence in this song—everything will come to an end at some point. If even stars can die, there is no reason that anything can last forever. While much of these lyrics are descriptions of apocalyptic imagery, one point of the song contains a sample (context can give you the source) that reads:
"Hello, Neil and Buzz. I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. I just can’t tell you how proud we all are of what you have done. For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives. Because of what you’ve done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the sea of tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth."
There is quite a bit to take from that and apply to the context of the song. But the major bit is at the very end: “it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth.” That sentiment from the words of Richard Nixon registers on an ironic level given what has occurred in the world and in America since 1969. That irony is that the song’s sentiment of ephemerality also applies to abstract concepts and to political movements. Just think of all of the social change over the past few decades that has undermined by the pendulum swing towards the far-right—not just with the Trump presidency, but on the world stage in European countries and movements of far-right populism. There is no sentiment of human rights that cannot be undone—but the ephemerality sentiment also guarantees that the pendulum will swing back again. I doubt that Steven had a political application of the lyrics in mind when he wrote them, but the fact that I found one demonstrates a universality to these lyrics that isn’t present in much of Steven’s other lyrics.
Regarding the music of the song, “Stars Die” begins with a fading-in synth from Barbieri that’s soon joined in by a jazz-like rhythm from Maitland and chords from Steven. Then, an electric guitar track comes into play along with some melodic bass from Colin Edwin. And then the lyrics appear for the first verse. However, a different synth chord by Barbieri signals in the chorus, given beautifully with harmonized vocals.
After the chorus, there’s another drum track which comes in This new pattern leads into the next verse and persists into the second chorus. Following that, the song drops down to nothing but a lone acoustic guitar, which leads in the Nixon sample as subdued electric guitar comes into play along with bass. At 3:22, the band re-joins for the next verse-chorus sequence. Once that passes, there is a brief guitar solo to end the song.
“Stars Die” is a solid song that probably should remain on the album. Kind of a shame it gets relegated to the second disc in the remaster (when there is room for it on disc one).
“Dislocated Day” (5:24)
This is one song on the album whose lyrics appear to resemble an acid-trip at first. In fact, there are some lines in this song where I flat-out have no clue what the hell Steven’s specifically getting at. Musically, this one has one heck of a frantic drum track coming from Chris (on the live version from Coma Divine)/Gavin (on the remaster) which is littered with ghost snares (softly-hit snares hit between beats; often so quietly that headphones are necessary to hear them at all).
A dislocated day
Peers into the ether.
Counts the stars inside the sky
And flies into the never.
Now would be a good time to ponder what a “dislocated day” is—a day which is unattached from the fabric of the self. This would entail that time doesn’t wait for you. Using figurative language, the remaining lines of this quatrain seem to restate that. This is the most straightforward set of lines in the song.
Looped around my eyelids,
A thousand shining flecks
Pale against the canvas Which hangs around my neck.
This is where the song gets tricky to interpret (and where I’ll have to be grasping at straws for meaning). Starting with the image of “A thousand shining flecks” being “Looped around my eyelids,” can relate to a prism of light. Specifically, “flecks” can entail flecks of light which enters through the eyes and is read by the brain. Light, like time, operates independently of the self. To add to this, “Pale” in “Pale against the canvas” is being used as a verb. This means that those flecks are lesser than “the canvas/Which hangs around my neck.” But what is this canvas? Is it a literal piece of art worn as a necklace? I don’t think so. I think that the “canvas” is a human head attached to the neck and that the reason the eyes pale to it is that a human head (by virtue of the brain) is capable of experiencing all the senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, and feel.
Dislocated day.
I will find a way
To make you say
The name of your forgiver.
This seems like it would be the chorus of the song. And you'd be right! We already know what a “dislocated day” is by analyzing it in the first verse quatrain, so the matter at hand is “I will find a way/To make you say/The name of your forgiver.” At first glance, that set of lines appears threatening. And it probably is, but it also extends the idea of being unattached from the self—by bringing other people to the mix, it should be reminded that one person can only understand their own self. Each person’s self is isolated from the self of anyone else—a self cannot know the self of anyone else. This division relates to the threatening tone of these lines in that if a self could know the self of anyone else, there would be no need to ever feel threatened.
Stood behind an inlet.
A starfish leads a dance.
It dreams it is a human
And falls into a trance.
How this quatrain starts—“Stood behind an inlet”—is a state of positioning that leads into the next line. This next line—“A starfish leads a dance”—concerns identity and ascribes sentience to non-human lifeforms. In doing so, they have a self and everything else is as unattached from that self as is true for the self of a human. That the starfish is leading this dance indicates that even lifeforms of privilege/positions of power are not exempt from this. The next phrase—“It dreams it is a human/And falls into a trance”—suggests that this starfish is as prone to envy as humans are. But it’s not like this form of life got to choose to be a starfish—what form of life that a self ends up taking is something that is a choice made by things unattached from the self.
A hole inside my body Is wired up to a charge.
Chemical imbalance
Tells me who you are.
This quatrain posits two different approaches to the issue of what is unattached to the self. The first half—consisting of “A hole inside my body/Is wired up to a charge”—seems to challenge the notion that technology is incapable of uniting to the self. But the context of the situation entails that such a unification requires mutilation of the human body—a desecration of the self. Furthermore, the phrase “wired up to a charge” may refer to an electrical charge, but that is a phrase which takes on darker connotations in 2018 than when Steven wrote the song in 1995. In 2018, one reads “wired up to a charge” and can’t help but think of suicide bombings—something all-too-real with the presence of ISIS in the world. But that darker connotation can also heighten the aspect of the desecration of the self—by mutilation oneself, you end up mutilating others in the process.
The other half of the quatrain—made up of “Chemical imbalance/Tells me who you are”—appears to touch on various concepts: surveillance, perception, and identity. But all of them tie back to the song’s central theme of things that are unattached to the self. Surveillance is necessary in order for the speaker to see the “Chemical imbalance” that tells him “who you are,” but surveillance involves the active participation of another person—a variation on the chorus quatrain’s theme. Perception ties into the theme in the same way that surveillance does—the active participation of another person. But things are varied further because it differs depending on who the other person is and what he/she/they believe. Identity appears to be objective and an intrinsic part of the self, but the changes of time make this less certain. What I mean by that is that over the course of a person’s lifetime, the various changes that person experiences can subtly alter a person’s identity. These experiences are often uncontrollable—cut off from the self—so even something as intrinsic to an individual as identity is the net result of things/events unattached from the self. In relation to this surveillance issue, this makes the perception vary on the person—both in the case of the person being monitored and the person doing the watching.
Insects hid the silence.
November brings deep rain
Between the flow to freezing And yesterday’s sustain.
This quatrain starts out—via “Insects hid the silence”—with territory as abstract as the quatrains which came before. Namely, that silence is something that is unattached from the self, so silence is something that can’t be hidden no matter how hard these insects try. However, the rest of the quatrain—which reads “November brings deep rain/Between the flow to freezing/And yesterday’s sustain”—makes it so that the last thing which is mentioned as dislocated from the self is nature itself. Which creates a contradiction given that humanity is part of the natural world yet dislocated from it at the same time.
Musically, “Dislocated Day” begins the sound of a phone ringing, which leads into how the lyrics to this song are delivered (on the studio version, at least). Once the band enters, it’s a brisk drum rhythm assisted by some feedback-drenched guitar and a steady bass riff. At 1:05, guitar re-enters the fray with a new riff that’s doubled by the bass. Only to drop out for the next verse-chorus unit. Following the second chorus, that guitar/bass riff re-appears…but it shifts at 2:24 for a Steven Wilson guitar solo that demonstrates some technicality—he’s improved on his instrument since Up The Downstair. There are even vestiges of this solo lasting into the third verse-chorus unit. The third post-chorus riff ends up repeating and serving as the foundation for an outro guitar solo, followed by feedback over a voicemail.
“Dislocated Day” serves as the hard rocker of this album. Something needed when epics, jazz-esque numbers, ambient-based improvisation, and acoustic balladry all already have their place on The Sky Moves Sideways.
“The Moon Touches Your Shoulder” (5:40)
Lyrically, this song is (on a surface level) about time and the day/night cycle. But analysis may reveal that the rabbit hole goes a little deeper than that.
Springtime is over.
Don’t head for home.
Creep up the ladder
And steal over stone.
The opening quatrain begins with “Springtime is over,” a basic and declarative statement of time, but the symbolism associated with spring suggests that this means that the best times have just ended. That the next line reads “Don’t head for home” supports this and suggests that anything which constituted a comfort zone doesn’t work anymore. How time factors into things is that time is the one creeping “up the ladder” in this situation. This imbues time with a malevolence that “And steal over stone” only furthers. As for what “And steal over stone” means, it can link to an idea that time is a killer—it steals your life away from them, as emblemized by “stone” being used when Cain murdered Abel. I may be a religious skeptic, but such an image makes sense in this context—time itself is linked to Cain while humanity is linked to Abel.
No time to forget this
World’s in your eyes.
Sway in the cloud blur
And light up the sky.
That time itself is negated at the start of the phrase “No time to forget this/World’s in your eyes” serves to shift the focus from time to the subject of this quatrain: the sun. But the sun (as the image of “Stars Die” reminds us) is also bound by time. In fact, the process of rotation that the sun is bound to makes it so that the sun’s link to routine is stricter than that of a human being. The reason the sun can’t forget that the “World’s in your eyes” is that the routine of the sun is so strict that the sun gets no time to itself. If the sun were animate, its existence would not be a happy one. That a “sway in the cloud blur” is the only independent thing that the sun can do makes it so that the sun’s existence is kind of a miserable one. Which is ironic that “light up the sky” is made possible through misery. In fact, this makes an animate sun take on a Promethean resonance—by giving light to humanity, you give up almost all free-will.
Cast off the colour
And tune in to black.
The moon touches your shoulder
And brings the day back.
This chorus has two units to examine: “Cast off the color/And tune in to black” and “The moon touches your shoulder/And brings the day back.”
Regarding “Cast off the color/And tune in to black,” there’s a spin being placed on the notion of the sun’s routine being involuntary—by using an active verb such as “cast,” every step of the sun’s routine is a choice. Just as much of a choice as someone turning off their TV, the sun chooses to follow its routine and shift to the moon. But the second phrase—“The moon touches your shoulder/And brings the day back” entails that the same applies to the moon.
Musically, this song constitutes as a ballad. As such, this song begins with acoustic strumming overlaid with light electric guitar flourishes. This lasts until 0:34, where the first verse begins. The rest of the band enters for the chorus in very low-key parts—light cymbal taps, keyboard layers, and long bass sustains—so as not to take away from the guitar and vocals at the heart of the song. At 1:38, some spacy electric guitar flourishes make a transition between the chorus and the next verse. At 2:40, the keyboards become more pronounced—leading to a section with significant usage of harmonies before the drums enter at around 3:15. Steven begins singing “Touches your window” and then a guitar solo occurs. Once that solo ends, the drums kick up a notch while there is some unnerving background noise with the synths going nuts. This turns out to be the bedrock for an electric guitar riff which ends up carrying the song to a halt, only for what sounds like a music box to finish it. This makes a seamless transition into “Prepare Yourself.”
“The Moon Touches Your Shoulder” is a ballad, but unlike ballads on past albums (“Small Fish”), this one isn’t dripping with excess psychedelia. That Steven could write a song like this would prove a big step towards the songwriter-based music he would write for Stupid Dream and Lightbulb Sun.
“Prepare Yourself” +“Moonloop” (18:59)
While “Prepare Yourself” is in introduction that leads into “Moonloop,” some characteristics on the latter should be addressed because it’s unlike anything else in the Porcupine Tree discography. For starters, it’s a slow-burning mix of the Floydian and ambient music whose primary purpose is atmosphere—even if there are some heavier moments in the mix, they ultimately serve to further develop the atmosphere.
“Moonloop” is a track that exists in multiple versions, with the version appearing here being truncated. For anyone interested, the full version of “Moonloop” was originally on a rare live album given as a limited release gift for those with VIP packages for some of PT’s tours in the mid-to-late 90’s, so it’s unlikely that anyone can physically own a copy of it anymore. However, YouTube does have the full version—a whopping 40 minute single-take improvisational performance which Steven edited down into the 17:05 version that appears here.
The way “Moonloop” begins with what sounds like maracas and synth effects. This synth effect persists for many, many minutes. In fact, one can see this becoming boring if one expects conventional song structure. As this is an improvisation, one is best left to take the performance as it goes—not analyze this one. The truly rocking parts are 13 minutes in, anyway. However, this is very musical….just not exactly what one expects. This is in spite of solid playing from Wilson, Edwin, Maitland, and Barbieri throughout the whole 17 minutes. Take it from someone who’s listened to the unedited 40 minute take, the 17 minute take has the best parts with less waiting time between them. Yes, this is a long and meandering jam—but that is the nature of the beast that is “Moonloop,” an improvisational piece that I welcome every time I listen to this album.
All that I’m saying is just listen to this piece because I can’t possibly describe every nuance that goes on in this storm. If nothing else, you might find it good background music (at least until the last four minutes jolts you awake).
“The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase 2)” (16:46)
As mentioned before, “The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase 2)” is an instrumental, but the song does have (non-lexible) vocals at one point—provided by Suzanne J Barbieri (wife of keyboardist Richard Barbieri), who does a splendid job at the moments where she is called for.
The second phase of “The Sky Moves Sideways” begins with mechanized synth effects with some intermittent drum rolls. This lasts until about 2:45, where a high-pitched synth from Barbieri rises out of the chaos, bringing some acoustic guitar with it. This shapes the rhythm that provides the backbone for the next few minutes of jamming. Said jamming includes various synth effects, percussion/electronic drum solos, and steady bass rhythms. However, before all of that, 4:40 brings a jarring shift with another rhythmic pattern that will recur throughout this song. After this occurs, there is an eerie motif that will also recur, before returning to the jarring shift.
Following that, the section with Suzanne’s vocals comes into play, backed by Barbieri, Edwin, and Maitland. After a while, Steven enters with a fuzz-toned unorthodox (but still awesome) guitar solo that lasts until roughly 7:54. Then the ‘jarring shift’ pattern returns, followed by the eerie motif. But the eerie motif doesn’t go away like it did before…but the synths grow more oppressive and a percussion solo gets added over the top of the existing drum track. All the while, intermittent stabs of guitar cast clouds of smoke. At times, you can hear synths that sound like people screaming. This builds up until all this tension is released at 10:21 in a sudden release.
After the release, a soundscape persists that’s coated with distorted effects—the eeriest of which sounds like someone drowning. Once something that sounds like tribal undulations (but is really the vocal track of Phase one sped up and played backwards) appears at around the 12 minute mark, the band returns for another guitar solo. The rhythm for this solo is the verse pattern from “I Find That I’m Not There,” making some continuity with this song and Phase 1—the speaker from that song is either permanently in the dream world or has found a way out. The lack of lyrics in Phase 2 makes it indeterminate what happened. But this is a moment of significance not unlike that of the build-up in Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”—that song shifted back to the verse pattern after a lengthy jam which dropped into nearly nothing (to which I have theories as to what that whole instrumental jam section at the end symbolizes, but I’ll save that for whenever I get to the Pink Floyd discography). All that I’m saying is that this song employed a similar technique, but the methods of composition make meaning indeterminate.
After the guitar solo ends at about 15 minutes in, things stop to a dead halt besides the sound of waves splashing and the sound of upright bass from Colin Edwin. Then, there’s eerie synth effects that sound like seagulls playing in the mix. Then, the synth and the waves meander for a bit in silence as the song (and album) ends. One potential way of looking at that ending is that the speaker of Phase 1 woke up, couldn’t take the disparity between dreams and reality any longer, and drowned himself. However, those waves could just as easily be taken at a symbolic level and denote that the speaker of Phase 1 has overcome his/her/their demons. Ultimately, there’s no answer given, but there is enough for you to draw your own conclusions by listening to the song.
While “The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase 2)” is (in my mind) not quite as strong as the first phase, it makes an appropriate closer to the album. The reprise of Phase 1 towards the end never fails to make my hair stand on end. I’d also attest that this part of “The Sky Moves Sideways” contains some of Steven’s most under-rated guitar work.
Final Thoughts:
With The Sky Moves Sideways, Porcupine Tree took the ‘modernized Pink Floyd’ approach about as far as Steven Wilson was willing to go—almost all psychedelia leftover from Up The Downstair had been stripped away from their sound. This was the point where they became purely a progressive rock group. As such, it was the fullest statement of their playing of that style before Stupid Dream added alternative rock elements to the band’s sound.
On a track-by-track quality basis, The Sky Moves Sideways was also the strongest album Porcupine Tree had released up to this point. In fact, this one tends to constitute either #5 or #6 for me…and all the ones ahead of that are yet to come!
The Next Five:
* No-Man - "Wild Opera" (September 1996)
* Incredible Expanding Mindfuck - "IEM" (1996)
* Porcupine Tree - "Signify" (September 1996)
* Bass Communion - "I" (April 1998)
* Porcupine Tree - "Stupid Dream" (March 1999)