Lead Story

Steven Wilson - Requiem for a Village

The progressive rock polyglot leans into British folk horror on a challenging, yet rewarding 9th LP.

Review by

Tom Parmiter

Tom is a UK-based music writer who first contributed to No Ripcord in 2018.

Steven Wilson was once infamously described as “probably the most successful British artist you’ve never heard of,” and as time goes on, the moniker feels more and more apt. He is successful because he’s damn good at what he does, and what he does continues to expand. His bassist for earlier albums The Raven That Refused to Sing and Hand Cannot Erase, Nick Beggs, described sessions with Wilson as ones you needed to be ready for, because if you weren’t, he’d just “do it all himself.” The man is a musical polyglot, and that continues here—on his ninth solo album, Requiem for a Village, Wilson is listed as playing 25 different instruments. And that’s before you get to the vocals.

On the second part of that opening quote, there’s a reason many people have never heard of him. Song structures like the ones Wilson employs go way beyond what modern mainstream music can accommodate, and this is meant in only a positive light. Requiem’s fourth track, “Now Departing,” is a prime example, with its a capella intro and ascending piano melody. Both are reintroduced with different instrumentation, and at different intensities, throughout a highly impressive seven-minute progressive workout. And he understands that balance: a busy, fraught track like this finds its perfect counterbalance in “Hiraeth,” a delicately played duet for acoustic guitar and piano.

Always trying something new on his records, Wilson adds a new storytelling device to his arsenal on Requiem: a narrator. And what better voice for building drama than David Tennant. His deepening lowland timbre is perfectly suited to the evocative and ominous ambient opening of “Swirl in a Lark’s Eye.” It’s probably fair to say the narration doesn’t always gel with the music; “Murmuration,” one of the album’s highlights, features a short narrative after a lengthy synth intro and just before Wilson’s own vocal; the song could work just as well without its narration. When it clicks though, it almost throws the music into 4D. “Great Green Map” feels like you’ve been dropped into the pastures its affecting rhyming monologue describes.

This track and “Murmuration” showcase some of the very best of what Wilson does sonically. It goes without saying that a man who has recently remixed albums from the likes of King Crimson, Jeff Buckley, New Order, and The Rolling Stones knows a thing or two about audio, and he creates huge, expansive soundscapes—acoustic guitars picking and strumming left and right, vast synth and mellotron sounds, and carefully harmonised vocals create a wash of melody. At the other end of the sonic scale, as in on the title track, he locks into an odd metre groove that explodes into a swaggering main guitar riff, very ably supported in this endeavour by fellow multi-instrumentalist Randy McStine and Russell Holzman, the latter’s drums tight and responsive to all Wilson’s sonic ticks. The title track is quintessential Wilson: eccentric lyrics delivered by a bandleader who darts between guitars, synths and piano before building towards a grandstanding outro, which eventually gives way to an extended passage of purposefully unsettling ambience.

It becomes obvious very quickly that Requiem is meant as a full listening experience that demands repeat plays, another reason for Wilson’s relative anonymity with regard to the spotlight. You might listen to “On Chapel Slope” on its own and think of it a fairly disarming, straight ahead single, but that would be only looking at one spoke on the wheel. Lyrics and melodies recur throughout the record, often to striking effect. The swelling vocals of this song’s bridge, for instance, return with renewed force in the closing bars of the genuinely haunting “The Old God Is Buried.” This isn’t an isolated incident. Sections of both “Requiem for a Village” and “Now Departing” emerge from the fog on later tracks, a device very well suited to telling the story of such a ghostly setting.

It isn’t all a slam dunk, “A Basket of Bees,” while aptly named, pushes the needle a little too hard on the quirky atmosphere. An intriguing acoustic riff and vocal motif set the tone for the first half, before the track shifts into a riff-driven workout. Holzmann’s drums introduce some clever rhythmic variations along the way, though the overall effect feels a little overwrought. This is but minor quibbling, though. After Wilson’s hypnotic bassline in “Wheel” gives way to a final frenetic climax, you are left with a strong sense of having listened to a fully defined musical story. All of the tricks Wilson has learned across his career from his heroes (and as an artist in his own right) feel like they are being deployed here. What you get is a mature, highly rewarding piece of storytelling, one that totally unique in his discography.

Requiem for a Village is out now via Steven Wilson Productions Ltd./Fiction.