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Since their emergence in the ‘90s,Porcupine Tree has been a prog rock band that transcended the genre'sconventions and clichés. The Incident,their new two-CD set, suggests that Peter Gabriel's Genesis provided them witha road maptheir moody chamber rock and interconnected song suites could havedescended from Selling England by thePound, even if they sound nothing like Genesis.
Porcupine's guiding spirit, Steven Wilson,seems inspired by prog rock's original vision of a vast sonic canvas ofpossibility, rather than the tight corner in which many prog bands paintedthemselves. The Incident absorbsechoes of new wave and post-punk, trip-hop production, even head-banging metal,into a sound recognizably their own. And like the best early prog bands, thereis a sense of intelligence at work. The lyrics and the music seem to be ontosomething beyond the everyday.
