Utter Trash--Porcupine Tree

The Band Moves Forward

An interview with Richard Barbieri of Porcupine Tree

By Bob Ignizio

Porcupine Tree l to r: Stephen Wilson, Gavin Harrison, Richard Barbieri, and Colin Edwin

Picture provided by Lava Records

Richard Barbieri has been a part of Porcupine Tree since the group’s second album, 1992’s ‘Up the Downstair’. The British psychedelic/progressive rock band was originally a solo project of guitarist/vocalist Stephen Wilson who made up for the lack of flesh and blood band members with an array of electronics. Richard says his involvement with Porcupine Tree came about because, “Stephen was in another project called No-Man and he asked me to get involved in some recording with them and go on a short tour of the U.K. We did that and it was enjoyable. He just started talking to me about music and he had a real enthusiasm for everything which I didn’t particularly at the time and it sort of rubbed off on me. He asked me if I’d like to play on ‘Up the Downstair’ and just do as many electronics and textural things as I wanted and that’s how it started.” After that, Porcupine Tree evolved into a real band with bass player Colin Edwin and drummer Chris Maitland (recently replaced by Gavin Harrison) coming on board as well. The band also recently added second guitarist John Wesley for touring.

Porcupine Tree’s first release as a quartet was ‘The Sky Moves Sideways’, an album that brought the band’s Pink Floyd influence to the fore and remains a fan favorite to this day. Although the band has since evolved, the legacy of that album can sometimes be hard to escape. Richard says, “I think we feel the most detached from ‘The Sky Moves Sideways’ era, a bit kind of bloated, progressive, long sprawling, sort of passages of music. And that’s often what a lot of the audience has liked and we’ll get requests all the time. Members of the audience will shout out “Sky Moves Sideways” or “Radioactive Toy” so that’s a bit difficult for us I guess. It took Stephen awhile to get out of that Pink Floyd thing. When we first started touring as a band and we started working on the arrangements that he had, because I had to present it on stage in a similar way, there were a lot of these sort of organ drones and chords and 80-90 bpm pace tracks. It did feel quite Pink Floyd. But I think we’ve gradually kind of worked that out, actually.”

The core of Porcupine Tree has been together for about a decade now, but when it comes to writing songs Stephen Wilson is still the driving force. Do the other band members ever get frustrated about not having as much input? Richard says, “If Porcupine Tree was my only project I’d be very frustrated and I’m not sure I’d still be in the group today. All the members of the band have their own projects and labels and other groups so we get plenty of opportunities to express ourselves musically. Having said that we do arrange the material, but I think sometimes in a group situation you have to accept that one person has a vision and generally directs the proceedings. Otherwise it leads to chaos because we’re all coming from very different musical backgrounds. Every year we’ll have a jam session, go into kind of a residential studio in the countryside here for maybe 4 or 5 days and just jam. Quite a few things come out of that. And then there’s the occasional co-write. Colin will co-write a track, I’ll co-write a track, maybe there’ll be a group track. I think that’s Stephen kind of having to give something away to the band so they feel they have some compositional input as well. In the main it does seem to work best with one person having sort of an overall theme or direction.”

Although Porcupine Tree has hardly abandoned their progressive/psychedelic roots, their sound has undergone a number of changes. Richards says now, “we’ve kind of taken a turn in a heavier direction and the stage set is a lot more dynamic. There’s less kind of spacey improvisations. Which doesn’t mean we won’t go back to that at some point but at the moment it’s kind of a rock direction. It’s difficult finding a description really. When people ask me I just say we’re a kind of experimental rock band. And then they say what’s the music like and I end up saying it’s a cross between Pink Floyd and Radiohead and then I realize it’s not really. It’s very difficult.” Of course there are always some fans who don’t want their favorite bands to progress or break through to a wider audience. Richard says, “I think we kind of lose a lot of fans along the way and we gain a lot. On our website we get fans writing saying “we don’t want you to become known anymore, we’d rather not too many people know about the group.” I kind of understand what they mean because I used to be like that. I didn’t want people to discover certain artists I really liked. That’s quite amusing.”

Unfortunately for those fans who want to keep the band all to themselves, Porcupine Tree’s most recent album ‘In Absentia’ was released through Lava Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic. Richard says, “Having the deal with Lava Records made a big difference. It’s allowed us to do videos and come to America much more often.” Prior to signing with Lava Porcupine Tree looked doomed to remain little more than a cult band in America. Now they’re about to embark on their second major headlining tour of the U.S. They’ll be sharing the spotlight with Opeth, the progressive metal band whose last 3 albums were produced by Porcupine Tree’s Stephen Wilson. Richard says, “They’re kind of big fans of ours really, and they didn’t want to go on after us, they want to go on first. I think it will be interesting. There’s already been a crossover with the fans. We’ve noticed a lot of Opeth fans at our gigs and they’ve had some of our fans at theirs.” The tour stops in Cleveland, Ohio on July 24^th at The Agora.

Of course sometimes major labels can put pressure on their artists to sound more mainstream, but Richard says that didn’t happen to Porcupine Tree. “Some people think that’s the case because some of the tracks on ‘In Absentia’ are more commercial than usual. I think we just became more interested in the concise, arranged kind of pop song. I think Stephen was sort of listening to a lot of Beach Boys, Yardbirds, and a lot of sixties music where you used to get these amazing arrangements all within a 2 or 3 minute period of time. There’s a real art to that and that’s actually very hard to do whereas the 20 minute experimental ambient chill out pieces are actually quite easy. It just kind of got into that plus Steve’s kind of interested in metal music and I think it kind of combined the two really. That seems to be the new direction. But there’s still all the old Porcupine Tree traits in there as well.”

As much as I like Porcupine Tree’s latest album I was glad to hear Richard say the band will be playing some early material on this tour, something they didn’t do last time around. “We started doing “Dark Matter” again which was from ‘Signify’. I think we’re going to be doing “Fadeaway” from the ‘Up the Downstair’ album, there’s a track called “Moon Touches Your Shoulder” which we’re rehearsing up again that we used to do, and possibly “Moonloop”. We don’t mind dipping back into the past and picking a few now and then, but sometimes when you move on it’s very difficult to go back and do justice to those things anymore on stage. I think you tend to peak with a particular song during a certain tour. Each song reaches a peak where you kind of put the best performance in, the best arrangement. When you reach that point it’s kind of nice to record it live and have that there. And I think it’s hard to get back that initial energy you had for that one track. But then if it’s something you haven’t played for years and years you sort of have a different take on it.”

Once the tour with Opeth concludes, Porcupine Tree plans to take a short break before embarking on one last string of European shows in November. After that, it’s time to start work on the next album. Richard says, “I imagine we’ll be recording over the winter and into next year. Hopefully we’ll have an album out before next summer. Stephen will probably write about 3 albums worth of material and then it’s a kind of sifting process until the band are happy with the songs that they’re going to work on. We try them out in the studio, work out arrangements, and edit them. This is probably where the real democracy of the group comes in that most people don’t realize.” And don’t expect the next album to be like ‘In Absentia’. True to form, it looks like the band will be tweaking their sound once again. Richard says, “I’ve heard some demos Steve’s been working on and there is a kind of difference actually. I can’t put my finger on it yet. I don’t think it will be vastly different, but he seems to be approaching it in a slightly different way and his voice sounds a bit different as well which is quite interesting.” Quite interesting, indeed. Anything less just wouldn’t be Porcupine Tree.