Deadwing

Deadwing is the eighth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released in Japan on 24 March 2005, in Europe on 28 March, and in the US on 26 April. It quickly became the band's best selling album, although it was later surpassed by Fear of a Blank Planet. The album is based on a screenplay written by Steven Wilson and Mike Bennion, and is a ghost story. Wilson has stated that the songs "Deadwing", "Lazarus", "Arriving Somewhere but Not Here", "Open Car", and "Mellotron Scratch" were originally intended for the film soundtrack, but when the project failed to find funding they were instead recorded for the next Porcupine Tree album. The album versions of "Lazarus" and "Open Car" essentially remain Wilson solo tracks onto which Gavin Harrison overdubbed drums.

Deadwing
Cover art by Carl Glover
Studio album by
Porcupine Tree
Released24 March 2005 (2005-03-24)
RecordedVarious English cities
March–October 2004
Genre
Length59:35 (Europe/Original edition)
64:34 (US edition)
79:07 (DVD-A edition)
LabelLava
ProducerSteven Wilson, Gavin Harrison, Richard Barbieri
Porcupine Tree chronology
In Absentia
(2002)		 Deadwing
(2005)		 Fear of a Blank Planet
(2007)
Singles from Deadwing
  1. "Shallow"
    Released: January 2005 (2005-01)
  2. "Lazarus"
    Released: March 2005 (2005-03)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[2]
Blogcritics(recommended)[3]
IGN7.3/10[4]
Kludge9/10[5]
KNAC(favourable)[6]
Metal Storm10/10[7]
musicOMH(favourable)[8]
Record Collector[9]
Virgin Media(favourable)[10]

The album produced two singles: "Shallow" and "Lazarus". "Shallow" also appeared in the movie Four Brothers.[11] It can be heard as background music in a bar. The album also produced music videos for "Lazarus", "The Start of Something Beautiful", and "Glass Arm Shattering".

The album includes collaborations with King Crimson's Adrian Belew, who plays guitar solos on the title track and "Halo", and Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt, who adds vocal harmonies on "Deadwing", "Lazarus", and "Arriving Somewhere but Not Here". He also plays the second guitar solo on "Arriving Somewhere but Not Here".

In 2017, Kscope Records purchased the album as well as the previous album In Absentia; both were remastered and rereleased in 2018 through the label, with the new versions having less compression and an overall improvement in sound quality.[12]

Background

Concept

Wilson described the album as a surreal "ghost story," and said that "the idea is ultimately that this album will form a kind of companion with the feature film."[13] He stated that David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick were major influences for the script.[14]

While introducing the song "Lazarus" during the Shepherds Bush Empire concert in December 2005, Steven Wilson explained that this song was about a mother communicating with her young son "from the grave".

On 1 September 2006, Steven Wilson announced in his blog that Mike Bennion (co-writer of the Deadwing screenplay) had released the first fifteen pages of the story. The film script thus far has made several connections to the album, including a reference to the line in "Mellotron Scratch" "A tiny flame inside my hand", the man mentioned in "Lazarus" "My David don't you worry", and to the artwork in the album's cover insert.

On 3 January 2019, Steven Wilson posted on Facebook[15] that he and Bennion had recently "reactivated and rewritten [the script] with a view to trying again [to make the film]", but that the name of the script had changed. Wilson also revealed that the "David" from the song "Lazarus" is the main character in the Deadwing script.

The members of Porcupine Tree during a meet-and-greet at AKA Records on Second Street in Philadelphia on 21 May 2005.

Note on loudness war

In a comment on the loudness war, Steven Wilson mentioned how he considered placing a message on record sleeves that reads as follows: "Please note that this record may not be mastered as loudly as some of the other records in your collection. This is in order to retain the dynamic range and subtlety of the music. Please, use your volume knob." Conversely, the CD version of the album has been proven to contain clipping and dynamic range compression, whereas the 5.1 surround mix on the DVD-A version does not.[16] However, subsequent releases Fear of a Blank Planet and Nil Recurring are mastered at lower levels, preserving more of their original dynamic range.[17]

Track listing

The band stated that 15 songs were recorded during the Deadwing sessions. The initial release, for Europe, contained only 9 tracks. All versions contain those initial 9 tracks in the same order. For the later U.S. release, an additional track was added on, the 2004 re-recorded version of "Shesmovedon", which was originally released on their 2000 Lightbulb Sun, bringing the total to 10.

The album was also released as a DVD-Audio disc on 10 May 2005 by DTS Entertainment. The disc contains 5.1-channel surround versions of all the tracks from the US CD ("Shesmovedon (2004)" was included as an unlisted extra track.) plus three bonus tracks: "Revenant," "Mother and Child Divided" and "Half-Light", bringing the total to 13 songs.

One more song, "So Called Friend", was released on the "Lazarus" single, bringing it up to 14 songs. There is another song titled "Christenings": while it was never released as a Porcupine Tree song, it was eventually released on Steven Wilson's side project, Blackfield's 2007 album Blackfield II. An instrumental demo called "Collecting Space" made in 2003 during writing sessions for Deadwing, but never recorded by the band. A proper version of this piece was released on the limited edition of Wilson's first solo album Insurgentes as an bonus track. Another possible song from this time is "Godfearing", which was later released on the web and that Wilson doesn't recall its exact recording period, but it was either during Deadwing or In Absentia.

Original European edition
No.TitleMusicLength
1."Deadwing"Wilson9:46
2."Shallow"Wilson4:17
3."Lazarus"Wilson4:18
4."Halo"Barbieri/Edwin/Harrison/Wilson4:38
5."Arriving Somewhere but Not Here"Wilson12:02
6."Mellotron Scratch"Wilson6:57
7."Open Car"Wilson3:46
8."Start of Something Beautiful"Harrison/Wilson7:39
9."Glass Arm Shattering"Barbieri/Edwin/Harrison/Wilson6:17
American edition
No.TitleMusicLength
10."Shesmovedon (2004)"Wilson4:59
DVD-A edition
No.TitleMusicLength
10."Revenant"Barbieri3:04
11."Mother & Child Divided"Harrison/Wilson6:20
12."Half-Light"Wilson6:20
13."Shesmovedon (2004)" (unlisted easter egg track)Wilson4:59
LP edition
No.TitleMusicLength
10."So Called Friend"Barbieri/Edwin/Harrison/Wilson4:49
11."Half-Light"Wilson6:20

Awards

Deadwing won the "Best Made-For-Surround Title" award for the 2005 Surround Music Awards,[18] and was voted the number 2 album of 2005 in Sound & Vision, which is the most widely distributed US magazine in the field of home electronics and entertainment.[19] In addition to this, the album won the "Album of the Year" award for the 2005 Classic Rock magazine awards.[20] The album was named as one of Classic Rock's 10 essential progressive rock albums of the decade.[21]

Chart positions
ChartPeak
Position
Billboard 200[22]132
Top Heatseekers[22]4
Top Internet Albums[23]6
United Kingdom97
Netherlands[24]56
Germany52
Poland[25]11
France[26]100
Sweden[27]26
Greece[28]19
Singles
Song Chart Position
"Shallow" Mainstream Rock Tracks[29] 26

Personnel

References
  1. Milano, Brett (3 November 2020). "How Steven Wilson Made Prog Rock Cool Again". uDiscover Music. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  2. "Deadwing - Porcupine Tree". All Media Network. Retrieved 25 October 2009.
  3. "Porcupine Tree - Deadwing - Blogcritics Music". blogcritics.org. Retrieved 25 October 2009.
  4. "IGN: Deadwing Review". uk.music.ign.com. Retrieved 25 October 2009.
  5. "Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike". Kludge. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008. Retrieved 9 December 2009.
  6. "KNAC.COM - Reviews - Porcupine Tree Deadwing". knac.com. Archived from the original on 15 January 2010. Retrieved 25 October 2009.
  7. "Porcupine Tree - Deadwing review - Metal Storm". metalstorm.ee. Retrieved 25 October 2009.
  8. "Porcupine Tree - Deadwing". musicOMH. Archived from the original on 12 January 2010. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  9. Deadwing promotional poster Archived 6 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  10. "Porcupine Tree - Deadwing - Album reviews - Reviews - Music - Virgin Media<". virginmedia.com. Archived from the original on 4 November 2008. Retrieved 25 October 2009.
  11. "Four Brothers (2005) - Soundtracks". IMDb. Retrieved 2 April 2008.
  12. "Porcupine Tree Classics 'In Absentia' and 'Deadwing' to be Reissued on Vinyl in 2018". stevenwilsonhq.com. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
  13. "MTV News". Retrieved 21 April 2005.
  14. "KNAC.COM - Features - Interview With Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson". 25 June 2005. Retrieved 11 April 2008.
  15. "Facebook post from StevenWilsonHQ".
  16. "Hydrogenaudio Forums DVD-A Mastering". hydrogenaudio. July 2005. Retrieved 2 August 2009.
  17. "The Revealing Science of Porcupine Tree in Surround". HDTV Online Magazine. October–November 2005. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
  18. "Surround Expo 2005". 15 December 2005. Archived from the original on 14 December 2005. Retrieved 15 December 2005.
  19. "S&V 2005 Entertainment Awards". February 2006. Archived from the original on 22 November 2007. Retrieved 24 January 2006.
  20. "Steven Wilson -The Complete Discography (6th Edition), p. 111" (PDF). Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  21. Classic Rock, February 2010, Issue 141.
  22. "Deadwing > Charts > Billboard.com - Artist Chart History - Porcupine Tree". Billboard. 14 May 2005. Retrieved 14 May 2005.
  23. "Deadwing > Top Music Charts > Billboard.com - Top Internet Album". Billboard. 14 May 2005. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 14 May 2005.
  24. "Porcupine Tree - Deadwing - dutchcharts.nl". dutchcharts.nl. Archived from the original on 22 July 2011. Retrieved 2 April 2005.
  25. "Porcupine Tree - Deadwing - Music Charts". acharts.us. Retrieved 25 October 2009.
  26. "Porcupine Tree - Deadwing - lescharts.com". lescharts.com. Retrieved 2 April 2005.
  27. "swedishcharts.com - Porcupine Tree - Deadwing". swedishcharts.com. Retrieved 25 October 2009.
  28. "PORCUPINE TREE - Discography". MusicMight. Retrieved 3 March 2008.
  29. "Billboard.com - Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks - Shallow". Billboard. 21 May 2005. Archived from the original on 8 September 2014. Retrieved 21 May 2005.
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