Disclaimer alert!!! Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson are one of my favourite artists.
This is a concept album about two medical conditions, ADD, and Bipolar Disorder that affect teenagers and the reliance on the medical profession to treat them with drugs. Thus rendering them as zombies. Well that’s my gist of it anyway.
Kicking off with the title track that presumably has a doctor typing a prescription on his computer, the track kicks into a great riff and groove with a heavy middle eight that should get any music fan drooling. The album is very light and shade, the way the tracks have been sequenced presumably to create the moods of the kids while they are on the drugs. Stand out tracks are Anesthetize, weighing in at a whopping 17.42 in length, and the close out track Sleep Together.
Gavin Harrison’s drumming on this record is on a different level, and on Sleep Together the groove is just sublime. Both of these tracks are Porcupine Tree at their best. Steven still uses Sleep Together to close out his solo performances. This is the first of two studio albums they recorded for Roadrunner and quite possibly their best album ever.
If you were to give someone an entry point in to Porcupine Tree’s music, then this would be the one to recommend from this period and maybe Sygnify from earlier recordings. I love every second of this masterpiece.
10/10 from The Grooveman.
