One light burns in a window

It guides all the shadows below

Inside, the ghost of a parting

And no one is left, just the cigarette smoke

There had been such heavy snowfall overnight that there were lots of road closures on the way, so it took us twice the amount of time to get to Luxembourg from Nancy than expected. The plan had been to then take the bus into the city (since public transport is free nationwide with a concert ticket), but we didn’t want to risk getting stuck if the weather took a turn, so we swapped our day plans and visited a cute animal sanctuary in Esch-sur-Alzette before driving into the town. We’d greatly overestimated the things to do there, so we needlessly hung around the venue for most of the afternoon. Thankfully, there was a mall right next door, so we were in close proximity to food, warmth, and restrooms, and even ran into Alex Hutchings at one point, who went shopping at New Yorker.

We were there so early that we started the queue, but this was one of the shows where a VIP upgrade had been offered, so those people were let in first. The Rockhal offers its own Early Entry tickets for a small extra fee, which I’d gotten, so we were next in, and made it to the front row on the far left (a little to the left of Nick) against all odds, since some of the VIPs preferred to stand further back, but more centrally. This show had the transparent curtain for the holographic projections set up (which I hadn’t seen since the Vienna show), and it was so close I could’ve brushed my face against it just by leaning forward, but as soon as we got to the barrier the VIPs we ended up next to said that “he asked us to tell everyone not to touch it because it’s expensive“, haha. We spoke very briefly, and they said that he’d played Trains, Postcard and Sentimental as part of the VIP soundcheck.

The show started on the dot as usual, and you could immediately tell the difference to the previous night; the crowd was a lot more welcoming, the band was more energetic and playful, and it promised to be a superior evening in every way from the way the band and audience interacted during the intro songs alone. As a way of greeting, Steven reacted to the applause with “why, thank you very much” and a smug grin, saying that the crowd sounded “rather macho” tonight, which Nick Beggs loves, while he and the other guys rather enjoy the “female presence“, which I thought was pretty sizeable compared to other shows I’ve seen, and quite well represented in the front row. He then asked who’d attended the Luxembourg show the previous March, and someone yelled out what I’m pretty sure was “I came from Brazil!“, but Steven got it wrong and must’ve heard “I went to Brazil!” because he responded with “On holiday, or just to avoid being here with us…?“, which was pretty funny. He then assured us that anyone who’d been to the show during the previous leg needn’t fear that he was going to be playing “the same shit again—believe it or not, I actually do think of these things, because I care“, but that they should stick around until after the interval because the changes would come as the show progressed, and for the time being they were going to continue with “the same old shit“, and launched into Home Invasion / Regret #9, which almost blew the roof off the place, the energy was worlds different from the French show the night before! Because of what he’d said earlier, I hadn’t expected the setlist to deviate from the standard one in the first part of the show, so I was surprised when Don’t Hate Me made an appearance. I adore the visuals for this song, and I like watching Steven play solos with the guitar slide!

His guitar speech followed, and while it had the same gist, it was still different compared to the Nancy show, and part of the reason was that the audience actually shouted out responses when he posed a question, which made it a lot more improvised and authentic, if you will. He said that he sometimes sees someone playing the guitar on the TV, but he can’t actually hear it, and he asked us when was the last time we heard a guitar solo in a mainstream pop song? Someone yelled out “yesterday!“, to which Steven said “please tell me the name of this elusive pop song with a guitar solo, I’m genuinely interested“, and he got “Opeth!” as an answer, which made him go “For fuck’s sake mate, what universe do you live in that Opeth is part of mainstream culture?” which was incredibly funny, I love it when his Britishness comes through in his choice of words, and for some reason I find it both unexpected and funny whenever when he uses an expletive—don’t ask me why, but that’s just the way it is, and it delights me. He went on to say that you can go on Youtube these days and see kids as young as eight years old playing things on the guitar that would make Prince ashamed of his abilities (he made a little detour telling the anecdote that when someone asked Eric Clapton what being the best guitar player in the world felt like, he replied “I don’t know, ask Prince“), but that that’s the problem; it’s become an olympic sport, all about technicality, and the likely reason why the guitar has been falling out of fashion is that no one except other guitar players want to hear someone shred 3000 notes a second, because that’s got nothing to do with music, and he’d much rather hear a single note that can break his heart than see such feats of ability.

He also remarked that he hasn’t given all of the solos to Alex but kept some for himself, and that he’d attempt playing the one on the next song, The Same Asylum As Before, without looking at the instrument: “And if I succeed, I may just look as sexy as Prince for a minute. Well, no, let’s be realistic; I’ll look as sexy as a 51 year old English nerd can manage“. Unfortunately I can’t say whether he managed not to look tonight, because for some reason security chose the moment he was playing the solo in front of me to go through the pit and throw everyone’s jackets, which we’d put down on the barrier, back in people’s faces?? So I had to figure out how to fasten it to my bag so I wouldn’t have to hold it the entire time, which was a drag, and I still don’t see why they couldn’t have said that we weren’t allowed to keep them there for fire-safety reasons or whatever in the hour we waited for the band to come on stage.

The band started on Ancestral, which prompted me to check the time, because while Don’t Hate Me is a long-ish track, it didn’t feel as if the show had been going on for that long already, and was confused as to why they would cut part one short… but they followed it up with Happy Returns!!! I knew to expect some of the older songs that popped up in the second half, but this was a first at the 2019 shows (and so far, the only performance!), and the one true surprise of the evening. It’s a song that never fails to make me full-on-sob whenever I listen to it (A. calls it my waah-waah-song), but the visuals tore out my heart in all new sorts of ways. I had tears streaming down my face two minutes into the song or so, and Nick gave me a really sweet smile through-out, although I felt a little embarrassed that he’d noticed, heh. Ascendant Here On closed out the set with Steven sitting at the back of the stage while Adam played the piano outro, and Lasse’s spaceship visuals once again enhanced the experience—there’s no doubt left in my mind that an abduction is what happened to the main character at the end of Hand. Cannot. Erase., rather than suicide, which is what I used to think before seeing some of the accompanying artwork.

Halfway through the intermission, a creepy video with footage from the Grace of Drowning era (of the creepy figure standing by the sea, then approaching a window) started playing on the screen with a Bass Communion song in the background, and the effect was eerie to say the least, but absolutely perfect to set the mood. Craig was the first back on stage as he launched into No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun—the first Insurgentes song I got to hear live, since Harmony Korine has eluded me so far—and the rest of the band joined him on stage one-by-one as their respective instruments kicked in; first Nick, then Adam, then Alex. Steven was last, and he motioned them to play more softly by crouching on the floor and putting his finger a fraction of an inch away from it, and the band played as delicately as they could without it turning into silence, only to take up the noise to the max as Steven’s part joined in, in a way that made the floor shake. I like this song much more live than on the record, as the distorting effects on his vocals are kept to a minimum, and you can understand the lyrics much more clearly; it’s a frightening, loud and utterly brilliant track, made even more disturbing by the fact that they followed up with Index (my first Grace For Drowning song, too!). It was the different arrangement with the spoken word, snapping finger intro (I did wonder whether the snaps were pre-recorded because they sounded too good to be live: Too synchronized, too loud, too perfect), and it took the creepiness factor to a whole new level, because by taking away the groovy beat, it really forces you to take in and consider the lyrics (side note: This song and its music video are based on a novel, John Fowles’ The Collector, one of my favorite books of all time).

After this chilling couplet, Steven asked whether we were ready, which got a great response, so he asked “do you even know what you’re ready for?“, at which point I yelled “DISCO DANCING!” (‘dahncing’, because Steven has ruined me and I can only say it with a British accent now). He chuckled and pointed my way, saying that clearly the people who’ve seen the show before know what’s coming, and introduced Permanating, which garnered a half cheer, half… I’m not sure what from the audience, but even Steven went “was that a positive noise, or…?“. He proceeded to say that the fans that have found him through his more metal infused output are some of the most accepting of this song (despite him “having done the best to drive that part of my fanbase away—not deliberately!), and that looking out into the audience and seeing the big guys with tattoos and Pantera t-shirts dance their asses off is his favorite thing. He said “I know you come to my shows to get depressed, but please indulge me in three and a half minutes of a celebration of life and show me your best disco moves—the metal fans are the open-minded ones, the progressive rock crowd… not so much, and I can see some people in Pink Floyd and King Crimson t-shirts looking very confused as to why they are being asked to move at a concert“. Me and A. had worked on a silly little choreography for lack of other things to do while queuing that afternoon, and while Steven didn’t seem to notice, we were right in front of Nick and he was absolutely DELIGHTED at our moves, which made it worthwhile because I’m really not the kind of person who dances unless drunk, haha. Song of I continued the dance party with a rather different vibe. I don’t think of this song often, but I absolutely adore it live, it’s so dark and sensual, and Steven was in more of a dancing mood than the night before, too!

I enjoyed Detonation a lot more than in Nancy, where the video somehow ended up giving me a physical reaction, probably because that’s when the fever I ignored through-out most of the trip was at its worst. I felt like it was much easier not to focus too hard on it, perhaps because I wasn’t looking at it straight on since we were on the side, or maybe Steven was just being more active and drew my gaze away—I really enjoy the way he whips his head around when he plays the long, repetitive guitar riff in the hypnotic second half of the song, which gives me some Up the Downstair throwbacks!

The stool and acoustic guitar were brought out, and he checked his setlist and said “I just got confused, I thought we were doing a different song because we haven’t done this one in a while“. It was my second time hearing Song of Unborn, and it was even more magical because there wasn’t a dickhead yelling dumb shit through-out as at the other show I heard it at, and he actually went a bit deeper as he was introducing it, saying that it may seem like a melancholic, depressing song on the surface, but that it’s actually very hopeful, and likely one of the most optimistic songs he’s ever written. It’s sung from the perspective of an unborn child, who asks why it should be brought into this fucked up world, and he said that while he’s not at all religious, he thinks that life is a gift bestowed upon us by Mother Nature or whatever one believes in, and it’s up to each of us to make something extraordinary out of this gift, however we choose to define “extraordinary”. A really nice thought, and I liked Jess Cope’s dreamy visuals for it even more than the first time around, and hope that they will be made available online at some point as well.

I’ll never get tired of seeing Vermillioncore live. It always feels much shorter than it actually is, almost like an interlude, but the band has such obvious fun playing it, it’s delightful to watch, and I finally forced myself to focus on the visuals, which feature the two gorgeous sisters from the EP artwork, and is a quite literal splash of vibrant color, it’s really great. The final setlist variation followed, with Steven explaining that next and final song (when there was some protest from the audience, he repeated the “final” with air quotes, saying something along the lines of “you know the drill, we’ll come back, but pretend we won’t, so you’ll scream for us, play along“) was off Insurgentes (there wasn’t much of a crowd reaction because he was clearly mid-sentence, but he interrupted himself and went “well, thanks for the enthusiasm…“, haha), back when he was experimenting with the extremes of sound. He told us about an obscure French noise artist called Vomir who makes noise performance art, where he stands on stage motionless with a black plastic bag over his head, while the PA blasts a single note of distorted noise—which is almost too much even for Steven’s noise-loving self, but he said that he’s always been fascinated by the two extremes in music. He thinks it’s easy to convince people why silence is important (although the 3000 notes a second people could profit from a reminder), but that noise is great too, and this song is from a time when he was very attracted to that sort of thing. He mentioned Vomir again, saying that we should look him up on Youtube, and that just by talking about him he’s probably just doubled his fan base (I did look it up, he was not exaggerating when he described his performances, and he was sitting at around 600 views when I checked. Crazy to think that at least one of them was Steven Wilson!). Of course, Get All You Deserve was the song, but I have to say that it would’ve been improved with some visuals or dimmer lights, because when the wall of noise kicked in with Steven on the floor going crazy on the pedals, the lighting was very bright and harsh, which kind of took away from the oppressive atmosphere of the song. Still a fantastic track to close the main set on though, it left my ears ringing and my head buzzing in the best possible way, and Steven’s vocals during the ballad intro part were lovely!

The encore didn’t hold any surprises—only three songs were performed compared to the previous night, so there was no solo song. Blackfield with Adam on keyboards was played again, which I possibly loved even more than in France! The most hilarious part of the evening followed, when he introduced the band. As in Nancy, he made up a name for Craig—on this night it sounded like “Drain Fumble” to me. He also added that he’s been poking fun at him this way all tour, but that at the RAH gigs there were some outraged people who thought he was being serious, and took to social media to say that “it’s disgusting that Steven Wilson can’t even bother to remember the names of the amazing musicians who make him sound so good!“. After that anecdote he went back to “Chris… Colin… I mean Craig Blundell!“, Nick was introduced as “Nigel Egg“, and Nick fired right back calling Steve “Shirley Stinson” (it wasn’t actually ‘Shirley’, but something close enough)… and then Steven introduced the next song as “The Smell of Fusion“, something A. was still laughing about halfway through the song, and then Raven closed the show, as usual.

It’s interesting to note that because of the setlist changes, only three Porcupine Tree songs were played tonight, compared to the usual four to six. It’s hard to say whether it was the novelty of the songs played, the extreme contrast regarding the audience compared to the previous night, or a combination of these things, but I absolutely adored this show despite being completely tired out after not getting much sleep, the adventurous cross-country drive, and freezing my butt off for most of the day all while still nursing a bitch of a cold. The band seemed to be really into it as well, they were in a really perky and teasing mood among each other as well as towards the audience (even though Nick was still not completely well, I saw him cough a few times), and overall, this was probably the most I’ve ever laughed at a gig!

Setlist » F i r s t P a r t «

Nowhere Now

Pariah

Home Invasion

Regret #9

Don’t Hate Me (Porcupine Tree)

The Same Asylum As Before

Ancestral

Happy Returns

Ascendant Here On… » S e c o n d P a r t «

No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun

Index

Permanating

Song Of I

Lazarus (Porcupine Tree)

Detonation

Song of Unborn

Vermillioncore

Get All You Deserve » E n c o r e «

Blackfield (Blackfield) (acoustic SW and Adam Holzman)

The Sound Of Muzak (Porcupine Tree)

The Raven That Refused to Sing