Steven Wilson’s Overview, the Album and the Concert.

Steven Wilson’s latest work, “The Overview“, released on March 14, 2025, is the concert tied to the album. 

In the article: 

The Overview: the album

The Overview Tour 2025: the concert

The album is inspired by the panoramic effect of astronauts’ view of Earth from space and achieves the aim of making us look at the blue planet through a spacecraft porthole. It feels like watching night and day alternate, wonder but also fear, above all a sense of helplessness and of mankind being put in its place before it. Comfortably from home. 

These are not two single suites, but each side is made up of separate tracks that connect to one another.

Objects Outlive has a strong psychedelic character, very refined sounds and a syncopated vocal line that moves as the piece moves. 

The Overview opens with hypnotic psychedelic space rock.  

A more rock-oriented section takes us back to Gilmour-like moods (great influences…) and there’s also piano while a wind of silence blows. 

It takes its time to explode, and does so with great taste and finesse. The backing vocals are gorgeous, especially when odd meters come in to taint that same psychedelic atmosphere of symphonic rock and folk rock. 

The record has a spine-tingling rhythm section and the guitar with distorted tones but always under control, never intrusive.

Scary-good keyboards, fantastic production, something Steven Wilson has (constantly) got us used to. 

On the album there’s a synthesis of prog, from the sounds and psychedelic atmospheres of the 70s to modern electronics. But also “classic” keyboards and synths we like so much.  Vangelis would have loved it, and Stanley Kubrick would have given it some thought too.

The whole album gives me the feeling that Wilson had a blast. And so did I, listening to it. 

I consider it his best solo album after the first four, untouchable albums.

Many young people, girls and boys together with us older folks, nothing to do with the latest concerts (Wakemann and Hackett) where the average age was certainly mine (55) and on stage there were sacred monsters who, however “young at heart”, on paper were young back in the ’70s.

Beautiful “Sala Santa Cecilia” with its structure and perfect acoustics, which later proved to be the best location for this concert and, in my opinion, for any prog concert.

The concert opens with the new album played in full with essential video support, images of rare beauty, which convey the emotions of the tracks and make them a story not only to listen to but to watch. Every now and then I turned to my wife, perhaps even more absorbed than me, with a stunned look at that wonder; neither she nor I expected it.

Here a digression is necessary: anyone who lives with a prog music fan knows that when they put on a record it will always be highly complex and different depending on the subgenre, the artist, the era and the country of origin. In my case, she knows I’ll describe not only the album’s story—so the era, its importance for the genre, the band with its feats—but also the era of my vinyl, the color, the cover; and not only that, she also knows that on that vinyl, in the most common situations, there are only 2 or 3 tracks over more than 45 minutes, and that if the vinyl is double, or even triple, all of this will be doubled or tripled. She also knows that when this happens and all these circumstances occur at the same time, I’ll listen on headphones to have a certain annoyed pity for her, hopping to incomprehensible rhythms with no music, showing her the cover in the silence of the house and making gestures and looks of admiration (for the record), all while eclipsing myself from the world for the corresponding time, and any interruption will be accepted only in the case of very serious or highly destructive events.

Well then, yesterday, Claudia was completely absorbed, astonished, focused. Her looks and her words told me “fantastic”, “incredible”…

True, that’s how the listening and viewing of the new album was, a set that ended with a standing ovation and several minutes of applause that, in my opinion, surprised even Wilson himself and the band.

Then come tracks taken from the albums The Harmony Codex, Hand. Cannot. Erase., The Sky Moves Sideways by Porcupine Tree, Insurgentes, 4½.

The immersive experience continues, but not all tracks are supported by video. When it happens, the audience listens in reverent silence, to explode at the end. The more rock tracks instead give us the feeling of a “classic rock” concert and the adrenaline rises a lot.

The band is extraordinary, and so are the on-stage dynamics.

Craig Blundell able to unleash power and precision across a very wide range of volumes, sudden explosions alternating with virtuosity, electronics and jazz touches.

Funny moments when he plays on stage with Wilson (or maybe the opposite is truer), who tries to stop the sound of the cymbals while he hits them (but you have to be lightning-fast to be quicker than Blundell, who naturally won the game), or when Wilson asks him to turn the volume down, more and more, never satisfied, up to a super-complex drum pattern played with infinite lightness... I got one of his signed tom heads and guys (if you’re drummers you’ll get it) it was used during the tour concerts!!!  

Sumptuous Randy McStine on guitar with his extreme sounds in some phases of the concert, sharp and piercing, crucial for every track, wonderful solos, great stage presence.

The bassist is instead an alien cyborg from the planet Borg, Nick Beggs, who not only gave us short solos repeatedly, but has an extremely musical way of playing bass (when needed) and a technique that stresses the instrument across its whole range of sounds; with him, though, we’re not talking about stage presence but rather theatricality in the positive sense of the term. Absolutely great.

Adam Holzman on keyboards, immense on every track, with a keyboard solo that was a privilege to hear live, great also when the spotlight was on Wilson’s electronics and he gave a retro, seventies feel that impressed me. Speed, precision, taste—immense.

Then there’s Wilson, who approached this concert with his great simplicity and humanity, which do not reduce the greatness of the overall work. The credit is his for putting together an exceptional audiovisual show and an outstanding rock concert. He speaks to the audience with perfectly understandable English, repeatedly addresses the theme I mentioned of the “ridiculous” length of the tracks in a prog concert, asking if anyone in the audience was there by chance accompanying a fan and what they thought—certainly funny, but I’m sure even non-prog fans had an unforgettable experience. He plays guitar brilliantly and of course keyboards and synths, sings perfectly with the band’s great contribution on backing vocals…

Beautiful the band introduction when he says: I’m used to going on stage with musicians better than me, and then he introduces them. Great humility and respect not only for the musicians but for the work of an excellent team in every aspect, from an absolute genius.  

Great show, lucky to have been there. 

The concert setlist

Set 1: 
The Overview
Objects Outlive Us
Set 2:
The Harmony Codex
Home Invasion
Regret #9
What Life Brings
Voyage 34 (Phase I) (Porcupine Tree song)
Dislocated Day (Porcupine Tree song)
Abandoner
Impossible Tightrope
Harmony Korine
Vermillioncore
Encore:
Ancestral
The Raven That Refused to Sing

The concert band
Craig Blundell
Randy McStine
Adam Holzman
Nick Beggs

The Tracks and the album lineup

My Version

Label: Fiction Records – SW8V, Virgin Music Group – 00602475245704
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Worldwide
Released: 14 Mar 2025

Tracklist

- 1."Objects Outlive Us" “This is were it started”
"No Monkey's Paw"
"The Buddha of the Modern Age"
"Objects: Meanwhile"
"The Cicerones"
"Ark"
"Cosmic Sons of Toil"
"No Ghost on the Moor"
"Heat Death of the Universe"

- 2."The Overview" “This is where it ends”
"Perspective"
"A Beautiful Infinity I"
"Borrowed Atoms"
"A Beautiful Infinity II"
"Infinity Measured in Moments"
"Permanence"
Duration 41:44

Lineup

"Objects Outlive Us"
- Steven Wilson – vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion, piano, pump organ, production, mixing, engineering
- Adam Holzman – Hammond organ, Mellotron, piano, Rhodes, synthesizer
- Randy McStine – backing vocals, guitar, sound effects, vocals
- Theo Travis – flute, saxophone
- Russell Holzman – drums
- Willow Beggs – vocals

"The Overview"
- Steven Wilson – vocals, guitar, bass, drum programming, keyboards, percussion, piano, pump organ, production, mixing, engineering
- Adam Holzman – backing vocals, piano, Rhodes, synthesizer
- Randy McStine – backing vocals, guitar, keyboards, sound effects, ukulele, vocals
- Niko Tsonev – guitar
- Craig Blundell – drums
- Theo Travis – saxophone
- Rotem Wilson – vocals