One Track Mind: Porcupine Tree, "Fear Of A Blank Planet" (2007)

photo by Diana Nitschke

by Pico

I tried but, damnit, I just couldn't ignore Fear Of A Blank Planet any longer.

Whenever someone asks me who among the current crop of prog rock bands they should explore, Porcupine Tree is always on the top of my list. While I enjoy Yes-reincarnated outfits like Spock's Beard, PT seems to be one of the few earnestly trying to bring the genre forward. From the beginning in the mid nineties, Steve Wilson and his merry band of experienced rockers forged ahead with their own sound that like some of its best counterparts of the seventies, struck a perfect balance of melodic English folk and power metal.

The problem, for me at least, is that The Tree seemed to drift closer and closer to straight-ahead metal. 2005's Deadwing brought them to the point where the power was overwhelming the grace. At the time, Wilson stated that PT was finally achieving a sound that is truly their own. Having resigned to myself that any more works of art like Signify weren't in the offing, I approached this year's new release, Fear Of A Blank Planet, with something almost resembling ambivalence. Even the first few listens of it didn't do much to excite me.

But like all great ambitious records, it slowly got under my skin. Wilson seems to have perfected when to use a soft touch (employing the services of the London Session Orchestra for the strings, for instance) and when it's time for go heavy on crunching guitars. And he's done it by borrowing tricks from noted predecessors like King Crimson and Pink Floyd, without sounding too much like them (even though Robert Fripp contributed a bit on this album and Adrian Belew appeared on Deadwing). Part of the secret has been adding enough contemporary touches to keep the band from sounding like a nostalgia act.

The other thing that stands out about Fear Of A Blank Planet is the thematic nature of it; Porcupine Tree takes issue with how technology and media is creating generations of numb, isolated masses. In fact, it's said to be based on Brett Easton Ellis' novel Lunar Park. Coming to grips with modern times hardly a new theme, but rarely has it been presented in such a perfect combination of texture, feel and lyrics.

Take the lead-off title track, for instance. It begins with a lone acoustic guitar playing a distinctive arpeggio line, with Gavin Harrison's counter beat drums soon making an entrance. Then Colin Edwin's bass, Wilson's electric guitar and Richard Barbieri's keys enter, following that same, desperate line.

After the first four, four-line verses are sung, cleverly sung at double meter on the last three lines, the urgency is turned up a notch as the guitar comes in heavier in the mix. And Wilson narrates the part of a tuned out, burned out teenager singing lines like:

X-box is a god to me
A finger on the switch
My mother is a bitch
My father gave up ever trying to talk to me

After chorus-verse-chorus and an instrumental break, the coda softens up the mood from one of defiant numbness to confusion, as ex-Japan member Barbieri lends just the right touch on string synths and organ:

You don't try to be liked
You don't mind
You feel no sun
You steal a gun
To kill time

You're somewhere, you're nowhere
You don't care
You catch the breeze
You still the leaves
So now where?

At seven and a half minutes, it's at the perfect length; taking its time to make a complete statement, using a variety of textures that envelopes the listener, without dwelling on each section too long. This song is not so much composed and played as it is crafted.

That's a lot already written for just one tune, yet there's several other fine points embedded in the song I skipped over. And there's still almost a whole album's worth of tracks worth their own turn at dissection. But if there was any doubt who is at the top of the prog rock heap, all doubts are dispelled when Porcupine Tree let loose Fear Of A Blank Planet. It was affirmed from the very first selection.

Listen: Porcupine Tree "Fear Of A Blank Planet"

Purchase: Porcupine Tree Fear Of A Blank Planet


"One Track Mind" is a more-or-less weekly drool over a single song selected on a whim and a short thesis on why you should be drooling over it, too.

Scott Fisher & 1am Approach, Step Into The Future (2007)

by Pico

On the radio they don't play no rebel music.

A few months ago we bemoaned the dearth of talent promoted by record labels while there's an abundance of it out there unsigned, and put forth Vancouver's own Heidi McCurdy as an example of overlooked artistry. About three hundred miles south in Portland, Oregon is yet another diamond in the rough who also recently self released a CD of his originals.

His name is Scott Fisher and Step Into The Future is a welcome respite from the treadmill of heavily sampled, heavily clichéd state of pop music today. Fisher's music, led by his acoustic piano, electric piano or organ (no synths allowed here) is homemade and handcrafted, something that we used to take for granted in an earlier era. He draws roughly equally from the wells of rock, soul, jazz and reggae, and sings as much about social injustice as he does the aches and pains of love.

When he sings of social injustice, as he does on numbers like "Step Into The Future," "See The Day," "3,000 Years," "State Of Mind" and "No Remedy," he does so with more than a passing nod to Jamaican greats Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. From lyrics like "The way they shape the truth and sell us wars/With indifference in the heart the veil of ignorance s worn" to the heavy faux Kingston twang, Fisher is downright channeling these reggae giants, or at least is making an earnest attempt to do so.

Instrumentally, Fisher is backed up amply by Bob Dunham (guitars), Enrique Gonzales (drums) and Matthew Voth (bass). It's a tight little group with jazz sensibilities and a rock attitude. And lest anyone thinks self-released equates to poor recording quality, Fisher was able to bring in some major league engineers from L.A. to provide the finishing touches the gives this collection a clean but not-overdone sound.

All good pop records should have distinct songs unified by a distinct style and this one succeeds on that count. The title track immediately introduces the audience to Fisher's funky piano-led brand of pop-reggae with a minimum reliance on technology (the acoustic bass is a nice touch). It features the leader railing against war, greed and religion...a recurring theme on this album...and his occasional, soulful falsetto. (Note: check the YouTube video of this song at the bottom of this article to see what I'm talking about.)

While they all send out the call for changing the world, the other ska-inflected tunes mixes in differing degrees of other influences; "No Remedy," for instance, has a lot more soul and less jazz. "State of Mind" is more funk-minded. It's not until we get into the fifth track, the urgent, war denunciating "3,000 Years" where Fisher really struts his stuff on the ivories during the instrumental break.

But it's not all about island protest music, here. "Forgot About The Stars" is a heartfelt mid-tempo ballad. "Shades Of Blues" shows off a trumpet-led theme that could have been inspired by Sgt. Pepper. The effortless, folky groove of "Android Love" rides on an going beat that reminds me somewhat of the Commodores' "Easy," while the CD-ending "This Song" could have been comfortably placed on Elton John's Honky Chateau.

All of this should tell you that Step Into The Future is varied, intelligent and honest.

Imagine a Marley-ized Ben Folds singing like Dave Matthews, with all the crisp musicianship and pop hooks that comes with that crowd. If this sounds appealing to you, then it might worth your nickels to drag Scott Fisher's Step Into The Future into your virtual shopping cart. You're not likely to be disappointed.

Video of "Step Into The Future":


Purchase: Scott Fisher & 1am Approach - Step Into The Future

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, "Art Collection" (1992)

NICK DERISO: Funky and tough, the Jazz Messengers were, until the very end, a group best heard blasting away on stage as vital, hard bop pioneers. That made this the definitive late-period release from Art Blakey.

"Art Collection" features two celebrated tracks with Wynton and Branford Marsalis, as well as one with Bobby Watson and Wynton Marsalis, and another with long-tenured tenor David Schnitter.

But I've always been more intrigued by the cuts with trumpeter Terence Blanchard and saxophonist Donald Harrison. Included are three recorded in 1984 and '85 -- notably "Second Thoughts," which absolutely cooks.

They auditioned after the Marsalises left Blakey's band -- appropriately enough, as the story goes, at a place called Fat Tuesday's -- in 1982. Blanchard was playing in Lionel Hampton's Band, he told me, while Harrison was with Roy Haynes.

"It was overwhelming," Blanchard said. "It was a h--l of a time in my life."

Even then a hot-playing young prospect, Blanchard nevertheless tried to stay in his rightful place.

After all, prior to his untimely death in 1990, Blakey had played with Them All: Jackie McLean and Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley and Johnny Griffin, Benny Golson and Curtis Fuller, Sonny Stitt and Julian Adderly (with whom Blanchard shares a passing resemblence), Wayne Shorter and Clifford Brown, Donald Byrd and Cedar Walton, and on and on.

But Blakey kept his gaze fixed on the future, telling Blanchard: "I don't want you to give a s--t about Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, none of them. I just want you to be in this band and work hard at being the best you can be."

In fact, Blakey's group was bested only by Davis' in producing successive generations of important jazz musicians.

Blanchard listened carefully, and quickly blossomed. Later, he moved away from the static traditionalism of fellow New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis into something his former mentor Blakey would have richly appreciated: African fusion.

"There's a tendency to think that, you know, Bird is Bird, and I could never be Bird," Blanchard said in a phone interview. "Which is true, you can never be Bird. But you can be yourself."

The heart of Blakey's message had been simple: "We could be jazz musicians ourselves," Blanchard remembered, "if we worked hard."

And work hard they did. This version of the Jazz Messengers toured incessantly during Blanchard's five-year stint, only stopping long enough to record two studio albums. ("New York Scene," from 1983, won a Grammy.)

The band learned to play with one eye on Blakey, who might shift tempos and arrangements like a summer storm rolling in. Soon they were so tight, and the history inside Blakey's songbook so long, that Blanchard and the other Messengers once played an entire week in Minneapolis, appearing on two shows a night, and never repeated a song until the last show, Blanchard said.

That made these unearthed live records all the more memorable in 1992.

Even late in Blakey's life, no drummer drove a band harder -- as a leader and as an instrumentalist. Contemporaries like Max Roach (who would later tour all by himself) dealt with more delicate concerns like timbre and melody. Some jazz guys even used brushes. Not Blakey, who was about two things: Rhythm, and how.

He moved with power and grace through these sides -- leaving the flourishes to bandmates like Blanchard, who was already inhabiting moments of embryonic brilliance as a soloist.

Blanchard, of course, left not long afterward. That happened with a metronomic frequency for Blakey, the downside of running one of jazz music's most proficient protege factories.

Blanchard and Harrison had already released two of their own recordings while still touring with the Jazz Messengers, and that made their ultimate departure in 1986 a bit easier.

"Art knew that his mission," Blanchard told me, "was to turn out young jazz musicians to be band leaders."

After a stint with Harrison and some time to rework his playing style, Blanchard would ultimately fulfill that promise.

"Terence Blanchard" and then "Simply Stated," solo records from 1992-93, both would reach the Top 10 on Billboard's traditional jazz charts. He's since established a long association with filmmaker Spike Lee and now serves as artistic director for the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance.

Guilty pleasures: John Hartford, "Me Oh My" (1987)

NICK DERISO: This anthology -- perfectly subtitled, "How the Time Does Fly" -- was a great place to sit for spell and ruminate on the distant twangy past. Flying Fish included 18 tracks culled from nine of Hartford's brilliant, throwback banjo records.

His brand of riverboat bluegrass stayed interesting -- and stayed away from sounding pokey -- with a thoughtful mix of solo work and band outings. Some of the more ageless stuff here is from Hartford's best recording, 1976's "Mark Twang" -- which was about as blue as bluegrass gets. (It won him a Grammy in the traditional recording category.)

Hartford went it alone on that one, playing fiddle as well as banjo -- and doing all the vocals. And all the dancing. (Yes, those were his feet you heard scuffling on the floor.)

Better, "Mark Twang" was recorded live in the studio -- in two takes, one for each side. That lent an immediacy lacking in some of his later, more produced albums.

Something approaching that spunk was found in "Nobody Eats at Linebaugh's Anymore," which showed up as a live recording from the 1977 Telluride Festival in Colorado.

Surprisingly, "Gentle on My Mind" -- Hartford's Big Hit -- was left mostly to the band on this collection. Glen Campbell not only had a smash with this one, he used it for the opening of his well-known "Goodtime Hour" program. (Hartford's "Natural to be Gone," by the way, was played over the TV show's closing credits.)

Hartford sidestepped convention, though, when it came time to record this signature tune on the album "All in the Name of Love," also from 1977. Between every verse, he called a succession of folks up to the mike to pick and grin. The list was long and impressive -- mandolin, piano, dobro, guitar -- because, as he so often does, Hartford had invited a band stuffed with go-to-town talent for the record.

In the end, Hartford provided a nice kick in the pants for a country classic.

Although it seems scarcely possible, these plucky arrangements and grampy sing-song vocals -- equal parts melancholy, hoedown and Huck Finn -- somehow find a way to make life on the mighty Mississip' seem like a worthwhile subject once more.

George Shearing Quintet with Nancy Wilson, "The Swingin's Mutual" (1961)

NICK DERISO: One of the smartest things Nancy Wilson ever did was start singing at the Blue Morocco in New York City, just after she blew in from Columbus, Ohio.

In was there, while Wilson still had her day job, that John Levy caught this smoking-hot 20-something's act. Levy, once a bassist with George Shearing, went on to manage his former boss, as well as Julian "Cannonball" Adderly and -- after that night -- Ms. Wilson.

"The Swingin's Mutual" would become the first of three stunning records in a row that found Wilson appearing alongside those other two Levy clients. (Later reissues also included enough extra instrumentals to make this release a kind of primer on Shearing's stuff, too.)

These aren't her first albums -- Wilson's "Like Love" and "Something Wonderful," both from 1960, included the sympathetic backing of Billy May and his orchestra -- but they are, nonetheless, definitive.

It took some guts, by the early 1960s, to debut in the jazz idiom. And Wilson did it with a flourish. (Of course, the irony is that Wilson has now gone very nearly completely pop. But that's another review.)

From the noodling version of Sarah Vaughn's "Lullaby of Birdland" by the Shearing quintet to Wilson's chirpy "Let's Live Again," these sessions were as sunny and romantically hopeful as the followup "Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderly" was moody and darkly foreboding.

"Hello Young Lovers," the third in this terrific trilogy, would find Wilson taking yet another sharp turn -- this time, with Shearing doing string arrangements on a disc of timeless classics.

"The Swingin's Mutual" inhabits the neutral ground in between, making it a great place to start.

There is an immediacy to this record that hasn't dimmed over the ensuing decades. Wilson trips through "On Green Dolphin Street" with an enthusiasm that made it seem like she and Shearing were writing it as they went. "The Things We Did Last Summer" had just the right breezy touch.

Throughout, Wilson's voice -- eager, thoughtful and true -- expertly weaved into Shearing's work. It's notable, though, that she did it on this record (as opposed to the Addlerly follow up) without the overt blues influences that defined early idol Dinah Washington. Her enunciation could be as pitch-perfect as a Broadway veteran.

Shearing, an underrated genius in the cool, West Coast style, neatly presupposed his final incarnations -- first in the 1970s with Mel Torme, then on a series of solo and duo recordings. Listening now, Shearing had already solidified his reputation as one of jazz's most urbane, unflappable and witty pianists.

Meanwhile Wilson is, by turns, graceful and bouyant -- first seductive chanteuse and then happy-go-lucky. She sets the stage for what came next with this timelessly charming record, and Shearing matches her stride for stride.