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Jun 23, 2022While Closure/Continuation doesn’t contain the triumphs of past efforts, it is a rewarding listen from start to finish and adds another medal around prog-rock ambassador Steven Wilson. This dexterous trio appears delighted to deliver for their core audience to whom what they hope is a new beginning.
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Jun 20, 2022An elegant and accomplished treasure from experts in their field. [Jul 2022, p.80]
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Jun 20, 2022The result perhaps misses the conceptual cogency of earlier Tree peaks. But it doesn’t want for controlled reach. Over a tight 48 minutes, C/C weds a reinvigorated affirmation of band identity to expansive energies, all to confident effect: “The sum of all, of new and old,” as Wilson’s lyrics put it.
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Jun 24, 2022A welcome new entry in PT's catalog, it reveals in fits and starts that the band have plenty left to say -- just what that is remains elusive and unclear on this wide-ranging return.
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UncutJun 20, 2022There’s plenty for prog loyalists to appreciate in the knotty polyrhythms, hopscotching bass and divebombing guitar excursions of tracks such as “Harridan” and “Chimera’s Wreck”, but genre agnostics may find more inviting access points in the sumptuous stripes of rueful melody, nuggety riffs and widescreen pomp-rock dynamics that Wilson and friends create. [Jul 2022, p.31]
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Jun 28, 2022Wilson first walked away when he felt the band’s songwriting had become too formulaic. Closure/Continuation is admirable in its attempts to reject that formula, but in the end, it also proves just how good they were at it.
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Jun 24, 2022Progressive to the very soles of its nine-minute songs, and characterised by a level of instrumental proficiency that is, occasionally, emotionally detached.
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Jun 21, 2022Yet by the end of Closure/Continuation, the main feeling that’s left behind is a sense of limbo. Wilson, Harrison, and Barbieri remain top-notch musicians, comfortable in songs that require technical proficiencies well above the average rock or pop musician. At its best, the album captures and rejuvenates the cerebral and melancholic mood that is Porcupine Tree’s signature. But in the end, the uncertainty innate to a title like Closure/Continuation hangs over the proceedings.
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Jun 20, 2022Its weaker moments suggest a group that’s struggling to find something new to say, both thematically and musically. But when the band stretches out and explores their full dynamic range, capturing the dystopian overtones wafting through Wilson’s lyrics, they’re still capable of reaching cathartic heights.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 19 out of 21
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Mixed: 0 out of 21
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Negative: 2 out of 21
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Jun 24, 2022
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Jul 1, 2022