| Deadwing | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Cover art by Lasse Hoile |
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| Studio album by Porcupine Tree | ||||
| Released | Europe: March 28, 2005 United States: April 26, 2005 Japan: March 24, 2006 |
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| Recorded | March-October 2004 at various locations through England | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock Progressive metal |
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| Length | 59:35 (Europe/Original edition) 69:34 (US edition) |
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| Label | Lava | |||
| Producer | Steven Wilson, Gavin Harrison, Richard Barbieri | |||
| Porcupine Tree chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [1] |
| Blogcritics | (recommended) [2] |
| IGN | (7.3/10) [3] |
| KNAC | (favourable) [4] |
| Metal Storm | (10) [5] |
| Record Collector | [6] |
| Virgin Media | (favourable) [7] |
Deadwing is the eighth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released on March 28, 2005. It quickly became the band's best selling album to date, though 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 essentially a ghost story. Wilson had expressed the intention to eventually have this film script made into a movie.
The album produced two singles, "Shallow" and "Lazarus". "Shallow" also appeared in the movie Four Brothers.[8] It can be heard as background music in a bar. The album also produced three 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 "Deadwing" 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".
Contents |
The complete concept and story has never been entirely announced by the band, and this is likely due to Wilson's intentions of attempting to turn this into a movie, and not wanting to spoil any portions of the story.
Wilson said it is a surreal "ghost story," and "the idea's ultimately that this album will form a kind of companion with the feature film."[9] He stated that David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick were major influences for the filmscript.[10]
On September 1, 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. It is available for reading on Mike Bennion's myspace blog and on the [Deadwing microsite][1]. The filmscript thus far has made several connections to the album in various ways; such as 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 (more specifically the page with the lyrics to "Halo" scrawled in it).
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'.
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 proved to contain clipping and dynamic range compression, whereas the 5.1 surround mix on the DVD-A version does not.[11] However, subsequent releases Fear of a Blank Planet and Nil Recurring are mastered at lower levels, preserving more of their original dynamic range.[12]
The band stated that 15 songs were recorded during the Deadwing sessions. The initial release, for Europe, contained only 9 tracks. All version 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 May 10, 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. The last song is 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.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Deadwing (Steven Wilson)" | 9:46 |
| 2. | "Shallow (Wilson)" | 4:17 |
| 3. | "Lazarus (Wilson)" | 4:18 |
| 4. | "Halo (Wilson/Barbieri/Edwin/Harrison)" | 4:38 |
| 5. | "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here (Wilson)" | 12:02 |
| 6. | "Mellotron Scratch (Wilson)" | 6:57 |
| 7. | "Open Car (Wilson)" | 3:46 |
| 8. | "The Start of Something Beautiful (Harrison/Wilson)" | 7:39 |
| 9. | "Glass Arm Shattering (Wilson/Barbieri/Edwin/Harrison)" | 6:17 |
10. "Shesmovedon (2004)" – 4:59
10. "Revenant" (Barbieri) – 3:04
11. "Mother and Child Divided" (Wilson/Harrison) – 4:59
12. "Half-Light" – 6:20
13. "Shesmovedon (2004)" - 4:59 (easter egg track)
10. "So Called Friend" (Wilson/Barbieri/Edwin/Harrison) – 4:49
11. "Half-Light" – 6:20
Deadwing won the "Best Made-For-Surround Title" award for the 2005 Surround Music Awards, Nine Inch Nails's With Teeth was amongst the nominated for that category,[13] and was voted number 2 album of 2005 in Sound & Vision, which is the most widely distributed US magazine in the field of home electronics and entertainment.[14] In addition to this, the album won the "Album of the Year" award for the 2005 Classic Rock magazine awards.[15] The album was named as one of Classic Rock‘s 10 essential progressive rock albums of the decade.[16]
| Chart | Peak Position |
|---|---|
| Billboard 200[17] | 132 |
| Top Heatseekers[17] | 4 |
| Top Internet Albums[18] | 6 |
| United Kingdom | 113 |
| Netherlands[19] | 56 |
| Germany | 52 |
| Poland[20] | 11 |
| France[21] | 100 |
| Sweden[22] | 26 |
| Greece[23] | 19 |
| Song | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| "Shallow" | Mainstream Rock Tracks[24] | 26 |
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