Never say never. After years of speculation and rumours, Steven Wilson has reunited with his former Porcupine Tree bandmates Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison for one of the most unexpected musical reformations. Prog catches up with the trio to discuss the story behind their big comeback album, Closure/Continuation, and find out whether this really is the end of Porcupine Tree’s 30-year career, or just a new chapter.

Words: Dom Lawson Portrait: Alex Lake

Porcupine Tree, L-R: Richard Barbieri, Steven Wilson, Gavin Harrison.

It’s often said that all good things come to those who wait, but surely nobody was expecting a new Porcupine Tree album. When the UK prog crew released a brandnew song, Harridan, last November (their first new music in well over a decade), prog-friendly corners of internet came close to having a shared emotional meltdown. Long before progressive music had any kind of critical or cultural recovery, Steven Wilson’s band were slaving away in the pursuit of a more interesting, creative and forward-thinking approach to artful rock. From the beginnings as a cod-psychedelic DIY project that only really existed in Wilson’s bedroom, to the esoteric, prog-embracing experiments of Voyage 34 and The Sky Moves Sideways, and on to the holistic modern prog magnificence of certified classic albums such as In Absentia, Porcupine Tree have always been essential listening for fans of nonboring music. Unfortunately, despite enjoying a steady upward ascent, they ground to a rather fractious and unsatisfying halt at the end of touring for their 10th studio album, The Incident. Subsequently, there’s been virtually no indication that there’d be any more Porcupine Tree music ever again, and certainly not that there was, in fact, a new album being slowly but surely pieced together.

But here we are. It’s 2022 and there is a new Porcupine Tree album (the stunning Closure/Continuation) with an arena tour to follow. As Prog speaks with Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison via the power of Zoom, the urge to bellow, “Well, you kept that quiet!” is overwhelming. Welcome back, you sneaky bastards.

“I think the biggest surprise to people will be that we never really stopped!” says Wilson.

“Some of the music on this record dates back as far as 2012. There’s one line in the song Harridan – and I forget exactly which line it is – but the first four words were recorded in 2012, and the last three words were recorded in 2021! [Laughs] I remember sending it to Richard and Gavin, saying, ‘Can you hear the join? Can you hear the difference in my voice?’ Because I absolutely can hear the way my voice changed during that nineyear period. Luckily, they both said, ‘Nah, can’t hear it…’ So that gives you an idea of the absurdity of the length of time we’ve been working on this record. There’s a line in that song that literally spans 10 years.”

“There is part of me that is a little disappointed in myself for doing this, because it’s the closest I’ve come to giving fans what they want, for many years!”

Steven Wilson

We can all be forgiven for spitting out our morning coffee when the news of Porcupine Tree’s return to active service broke. In truth, the biggest reason why most Porcupine Tree fans firmly believed that the band were done and dusted is that things seemed to end particularly badly. Their last gig, at the Royal Albert Hall in December 2010, was well received and certainly seemed to be a significant moment, at least in terms of prog’s surging popularity. Behind the scenes, however, Porcupine Tree were collectively fried a break, and I think it would’ve been different if we had. But we were persuaded to keep going and it was too much for us on a personal level.”

“Yeah, it was at the end of 14 months of touring, and it was just too much,” says drummer Gavin Harrison. “We’d burned ourselves out. There are always people who will push you to do it, the record companies and management and promoters and agents, and they’re always very keen for you to go on tour. The morale of the musicians is what holds the whole thing together, and a band is a very fragile thing. It rests on a lot of very tiny details, and how well you’ve slept, and how well you’ve eaten. I think the pressure of being on tour, on and off, for 14 months, was more than any of us could really take. At the end I thought, ‘I don’t even want to see these guys for at least a year!’”

In addition to being soundly knackered and understandably grouchy after 14 months of touring, Porcupine Tree were also experiencing a bout of collective creative disillusionment. The Incident still stands up as a magnificent record, at least as far There was never an official announcement that Porcupine Tree had gone their separate ways. In fact, speaking to Wilson, Barbieri and Harrison now, it’s obvious that they all regarded the band as an ongoing concern, but one that they were in no rush to return to. As it turned out, the ‘split’ lasted for barely two years, and they’ve been working on Closure/ Continuation in one form or another since 2012. The most obvious difference between Porcupine Tree in 2022 and the band that graced the Albert Hall stage all those years ago is that they are now a trio, and Steven Wilson has performed all the bass guitar parts on the new songs. As Gavin Harrison explains, the writing process for the new album was entirely spontaneous and might just as easily have developed into another project altogether.