Here's another review of "The Incident"
"My review copy just arrived in my mailbox -- this is like Christmas and a birthday rolled into one. My promo includes the 4 songs on disc 2 -- Flicker, Bonnie the Cat, Black Dahlia, and Remember Me Lover -- all on the same disc.
I won't try to review the album here after one listen. As others have remarked, it's a pretty dense record and a lot to take in on one listen. I'll marshal my thoughts for my official magazine review once I've had a chance to listen to the album many times. Will comment that "The Blind House" has the album's best chorus, though the unconventional "Drawing the Line" grew on me even as I listened to the track. "Time Flies" is the highlight of disc 1. It starts off sounding like Pink Floyd circa "Animals" and blatantly cribs a few Dave Gilmour riffs, but the middle section goes into its own unique PT area with monolithic keyboards and a massive guitar solo that starts off like a climax and, impossibly builds and builds on top of it. Great! There's a lot of fairly impenetrable stuff on
"The Incident" that will take many attentive listens to fully drill into.
Quick descriptions of the disc 2 tracks, though, as I've not seen anything on the forum about what they sound like. Just one listen, so bear with my vague descriptions.
"Flicker" is one of the album's very best tracks. This spacey ballad has a dreamy keyboard intro that's soon joined by with a lovely strummed acoustic guitar accompaniment and big booming drums. It has a wordless "da-da-da-da" chorus that made me swoon. And then, rather than a second verse, it's straight into a big soaring guitar solo. Then Steven using double-tracked vocals, sings "all of the big new charlatans will stare at us." Then more guitar and that lovely chorus. Short, but very sweet.
"Bonnie the Cat" is stranger than its title. It's a very odd track. Spoken, whispery verses. No real chorus as such. This track jumps around stylistically with heavy drumming, some very experimental keyboard, and some heavy riffage and shifting time signatures. SW makes his guitar snarl and growl. A grower, but I think I may come to like it with repeat listens.
"Black Dahlia" is another ballad. Oddly enough, this lyric has a few mentions of cats and cages and I had to double check that this track wasn't in fact "Bonnie the Cat." Melancholy vocal over a gentle keyboard figure with a slightly understated yet lovely chorus. Track quietly builds and builds to a keening guitar solo. Lovely stuff. Quite catchy, actually.
"Remember Me Lover" is, as its title suggests, yet another ballad. Starts off like something off No-Man's "Together We're Stranger." Simple guitar figure over some phantom keyboard effects in the background. Extremely mellow with another great chorus, albeit one where SW's voice is murkily submerged in the mix and he sounds clearly hurt as he sings, "I wish you could have kept your mouth shut." Then this track takes off with some fairly heavy riffage before briefly subsiding back to quietude and then surging for the final chorus. It ends powerfully with more outro riffs with some strafing keyboard FX and heavy pounding by Gavin. PT albums often end with a great heartbreak moment and while this one doesn't top, say, "Dark Matter" or "Glass Arm Shattering," it's very good."
