Porcupine Tree - Deadwing

Ah, the porcupine, the most curious and indefinable of all nature’s mammals: soft and furry, it is an innocent, yet extremely vocal, loner--right up until needing protection. That’s when it gets as harsh as necessary, with quills aimed and ready to maim the unsuspecting. Porcupine Tree works in reverse: They look dark and mysterious, teething and violent. In actuality, their new record Deadwing is a far lighter affair, one capable (as in “Shallow”) of getting more rapturously rabid but more comfortable when ebbing into the nuances of harmony and vocal precision. Never erratic, even when hollering, they switch effortlessly from the aggressive mainline to the hypnotizing classic rock, replete with gentle guitar and light, tonal unison. And while the rhythm is soft, it’s also compelling: A simple drum beat often enough to drag along a guitar line left to simple echo, tremulously, in the darkness. Spinning together since the early ‘90s, they’ve managed to retain the looser feel of that era, a time when there was more room to play. A song like “Lazarus,” with careful piano accompaniment, is both poignant and full-bodied, a real joint collection, the kind that makes both guitar and heart strings warble. A lot of the shorter songs seem born of the longer ones, like excised segments: The repetition is tiring. Also, the music takes over the vocals so often that it’s hard to distinguish topics; instead, one long odyssey that, while melodious, is also not anything overly new. “Mellotron Scratch” is too slow for the song to pick up beyond the repetitive melody, too softly whispered for the vocals to have any effect. “She’s Moved On,” on the other hand, has both an affecting hook and stronger crooning. Just remember (“Glass Arm Shattering”), overuse of echo doesn’t make a song more haunting, it just reminds us how hard you’re trying. Use those quills, Porcupine Tree, let out that sense of the psychedelic that pokes around the edges of your songs. Unbound by the images of a more mainstream studio, you might at last get back to your barbed beauty. [www.porcupinetree.com]