<B>3.

Arriving Somewhere But Not Here (Deadwing)</B>

Well, we finally got here. This song has been predicted everywhere in the entire
spectrum, from the shocker at #36 (instead we got the title track from the same
album), to #1. Eventually, though, it had to settle at a spot. We got it into the top
three, which is a title to be revered. These three songs are on such a level, I can't
even begin to convey it to you guys. Arriving is the weakest of the three in my
opinion, but that says absolutely nothing against it. This embodies everything that
Porcupine Tree is about. Steven Wilson's clever lyrics as well as perfect vocalization
of said vocals, guitars to make you cream yourself, technical prowess to a degree
that Dream Theater would envy, and it is the very centerpiece of Deadwing. An
album that's very widely considered one of Porcupine Tree's best efforts to date.
Make no mistake. Arriving Somewhere But Not Here is a behemoth of a song.
Standing at twelve minutes long, it's a hulkering giant among its album, although
the title track comes close at nearly ten minutes. And as I mentioned before,
everything is in place for it to be the number one song. Hell, it's one of my top ten
favorite songs of all time. That speaks a lot about its quality, because I like to think I
have extremely high standards. Indeed, my top ten songs ever are all perfect. And
it's hard for me to find an imperfection in Arriving. It's twelve minutes long, and not
a second of it is wasted. It starts off as an incredibly mellow piece of music, but
gradually what it's about starts to sink in. That this titan here is about a horrible
tragedy. Much like Heartattack in a Layby, although that song is more about the
tragic aspect of tragedy. Arriving is more about its tragedy's effect on the grand
scheme of things. And you can find parallels throughout it to the entire album.
Indeed, if you come up with any theory about the meaning of Deadwing, it has
some connection to Arriving. That's what a titan this song. It's not exaggerated
when it's called the centerpiece of the album. It's even the fifth song out of nine on
the album, falling exactly in the middle of the album. But that's what it ends up
being.
Look at In Absentia and Fear of a Blank Planet for a second, two other very obvious
concept albums. In Absentia has no centerpiece whatsoever. It flows from beginning
to end, with each song being just as important as the last (except maybe The Sound
of Muzak, Wedding Nails, and possibly even Heartattack in a Layby). Fear of a Blank
Planet is less cohesive, with one song in Anesthetize that's a centerpiece, but the
concept doesn't revolve around it. That album is divided into two or three stories,
and Anesthetize is just one of them. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe
it makes the album more solid and balanced as a whole. But what we give up here
is one song that's so incredibly good, and superior to the rest of its album sans The
Start of Something Beautiful, that it's a worthy sacrifice. I can't stress that enough,
what a representative Arriving is lyrically of its album. Deadwing is a ghost story,
first and foremost. Or so it's called, and that's what we definitely see in Deadwing,
Lazarus, and Glass Arm Shattering. Arriving is about a car crash and a resulting
death. Coincidence? Then there's the emotional themes. We've got the relationship

between two people, which we experience in Mellotron Scratch and The Start of
Something Beautiful. Here, we have a person who's obviously reacting to the crash
in one way or another. They go through a lot of different outlooks on it, but the
underlying one is "All my dreams... sacrificed". Then fitting in with what Deadwing
does in my opinion, in starting out with a kickass hook to draw you in, Arriving has
the best one-liner in the band's catalog: "Never stop the car on a drive in the dark".
It's eerie and hauntingly effective.
It doesn't stop lyrically. Musically, Deadwing is an extremely divided album, as
we've observed. Minus Lazarus, the first half is very heavy, and minus Open Car,
the second half is very mellow. Arriving doesn't fall into either of those categories. It
starts very melodic, then starts building up more and more, until it completely
climaxes in the solo. The solo, of which I might add, is performed by Mikael
Akerfeldt. In Opeth style, it's an extremely dark, gritty, and rather thunderous solo.
And a great one, too, as you can imagine. Like Dark Matter, though, the residential
instrumental section of the song isn't just a guitar solo. It's a ton of instruments in
all their grandeur, and they create a mesmerizing middle section of the song.
Bottom line is, though, it consists of a number of soft and heavy sections. Then
you've got the song's actual ending, but after the experience, you can see why
Deadwing actually does have two halves in the way it does. It's ALL because of
Arriving. Deadwing's got a pre-Deadwing, and a post-Deadwing. No way around
that. The heavy stuff is obviously the more light, upbeat stuff, as we see in
Deadwing and Shallow. The mellow stuff at the end, though, is dark, melancholy,
and often very depressing. Mellotron Scratch and The Start of Something Beautiful,
anyone?
So as we've established, Arriving has a ridiculous gravity, and it's an epic in every
sense of the word. Whether you approach the word from a progressive standpoint or
not, you can't escape the attachment that Arriving has to it. With the solo, the
length it is, and the themes which connect to both humanity and the supernatural
simultaneously, Arriving is epic. So just like Trains but even moreso, Arriving attains
perfection. I haven't denied that any song starting with the top five is perfect.
Because they all are. I suppose the reason that the other two songs are ahead of it
is because of personal reasons. I can connect a little more to Anesthetize and
Heartattack than I can to Arriving, but that's just me. You can't objectively compare
this song and the other two here, they're just that great. Hell, Arriving used to be #2
on my list, but another song managed to surpass it, but that's just life. That's just
testament to how Porcupine Tree is capable of achieving greater than perfection. I
suppose so that you can understand exactly how perfect is, I've got to dissect it. I
have no problem with that.
So now, as we start Arriving in terms of what its opening music sounds like, let's
touch on yet another thing that it does perfectly. The atmosphere. It is always
incredibly appropriate. Whether it's the eerie feel that actually comes with the
accident, or the thundering solo that comes from the resulting rage of said accident,

the song will always perfectly match it. So as you can imagine, the beginning of the
song is very dark and quiet. The beginning is extremely memorable. It opens up
with the sound of Barbieri scratching over his keyboards, and starting to create a
very ill atmosphere. By his lonesome, at least at first. You'll also hear what sounds
to me like the ticking of a clock, although it's obviously a percussion effect. It's an
extremely strong effect, and that'll take you right into the song. Hell, you'll be
feeling it right when you hear it. You'll get taken to a scene in the summer, at the
side of the road, on a dark night, where something horrible is happening. Arriving
instantly lets me drift off into that.
You could say that I have sentiments to this song, and I'd definitely agree with you if
you said I did. Anesthetize, Arriving, Heartattack, Trains... I have attachments to all
of these songs for some reason or another. Mainly because Porcupine Tree write
their songs in such a way that I can connect them to my own life. Trains and
Arriving, though, instantly draw me back to the summer where I first heard them.
And that just sweeps me away, right there. So less than a minute into the song,
while it's still completely instrumental, Arriving already hooks me. You can only
imagine how it's going to go when the vocals set in. So about fifty seconds in, we've
still only got that percussion effect and the keyboard. Eventually, acoustic guitar
comes in. That's the only guitar we've got early in. Steven and Wesley in the DVD
enter, and they only make the song more alluring. You want to know what's about to
happen. Colin enters on bass, and Steven begins to explain.
<I>Never stop the car on a drive in the dark
Never look for the truth in your mother's eyes
Never trust the sound of rain upon a river rushing through your ears
Arriving somewhere but not here</I>
The atmosphere that Arriving sets in at this point is otherworldly. One line into the
song: "Never stop the car on a drive in the dark", and you're completely captivated.
At least, I am. Because the way I see it, Arriving is one big mystery. We know right
away that someone is dying. We also know that there's a lot of reaction to that. A lot
of rhetorical questions are being asked, but the exact nature of what occurs is a
complete enigma. Hell, I know I've said that it was a car accident. Or more
specifically, a drunk driving accident. But there's tons of evidence that it's
something more than that. And we don't even know what happens afterwards,
although we can speculate. Just that very first line already starts a complete cloud
of illusion over everything. I can't get over how good a job it does, hooking you in. I
can't even tell it's a foreboding, that is, an ill omen, or a warning. You can also see it
right now, someone driving down the road very late at night, and stopping because
something is wrong. Maybe because there's an obvious drunk driver nearby, who he
probably could have dodged if he hadn't stopped. Or maybe that's just a warning to
all of us. So that we don't end in the same fate as this unfortunate person. Or
another possible theory to it is that it's based on the idea that you're going down
the road, not knowing exactly where you're headed, and well, it's a drive in the

dark. That's obviously a stretch, but it's something that Steven could very easily
work into the song's overall message. Steven's vocal delivery of this whole thing is
perfect, too. It's the kind of thing in which he's talking in a very serious tone of
voice, but we don't know exactly how he feels about it yet. You can detect a sort of
pain in his voice, though, so that might help to give you some evidence.
Next line is equally epic. "Never look for the truth in your mother's eyes". See, here
is yet another thing that Arriving does perfectly. The lyrics. Each one just builds on
the other, one after one after one, making the last one more relevant. And what it
leads to is a very rich and complex song, in which every single line can be
interpreted as an incredible one liner. And I'll actually reveal it now. Arriving has my
single favorite lyrics of any Porcupine Tree song. That's because it gives an
emotional delivery, a sense of mystery, and ill omens all at the same time, together
with warnings and some of the most terrifying imagery ever put into lyrics. Like that
one. "Never look for the truth in your mother's eyes". That just gives the sense of
you having absolutely no one that you can trust. There's a few reasons for that.
Maybe it's that your "mother", for instance, is betraying you. Or, there's horrible
things in the world. That your mother doesn't want you to realize. Then you go down
your path, and have to learn all the terrors of the world on your own, and by the
time you do, you've already become corrupted by them. That's very possibly a
theme here.
Maybe it's death that's the thing you never really knew about. What exactly awaits
you in the beyond, how soon it might be, et cetera. Either way, you might not be
ready for it when it comes, as that line right there gets at. It can be just juicy
figurative language for no one telling you the truth, but that's definitely the way I
perceive it. Then after that, the equally forbidding, "Never trust the sound of rain
upon a river rushing through your ears". Probably the most stick out word from that
line is "rain". Indeed, when I draw myself into Arriving's environment, something I
picture is being in the car before the accident takes place, and slowing down due to
rain pouring down on the windshield. Then again, here's another thing I like to
interpret a number of different ways. The whole thing about going down the road,
not knowing what you're doing? It's your mind that has control over you when you
do that. You've got this wild, inner mentality to you that's preventing you from doing
the logical thing, and that's the rain that pours down onto the river inside your
brain. Perhaps that's what's occurring here. Steven tells you not to trust that. And
then...
Arriving somewhere but not here. That's all the clarity we get. It's so crucial, that it
became the title of the song, yet we don't know who is arriving where instead of
what place. Of course, we can get clues just through the way Steven sings it. The
way he stresses the "somewhere". That's obviously the afterlife. What kind of
afterlife it's going to be, though, is the question. I suppose if we're still looking at
the song from the non-conceptual aspect, that it's going down the wrong road in
life, but otherwise, the song is just told from the perspective of an observer who had

strong attachment to the person who's dying here. They want this person to come
home, which is obviously where they're en route to. Unfortunately though, they die
in an unexpected way, and they're not going to be coming back. They're going to be
going to some other place. Heaven? Maybe not. Maybe they'll be coming right back,
actually, as I'll get into very soon. Steven keeps the pace of this incredible, though.
It's slow, but it's eerie and almost ghastly at the same time. And his vocal... oh my
god. Sends shivers right down my spine. As such, he transitions to the next verse.
<I>Did you imagine the final sound as a gun
Or the smashing windscreen of a car?
Did you ever imagine the last thing you'd hear as you're fading out was a song?
Arriving somewhere but not here</I>
What I love about this song is that while Steven plays his acoustic guitar, Barbieri
never stops. He keeps the song dark, and kind of ominous at that. You couldn't have
a better atmosphere for this, since this verse is very obviously talking about
someone's last moment, and how unexpected death really is. Only way to get more
atmosphere than that is to stop the song at a random moment, but Dream Theater
already did that, so this is the next best thing. If you listen to those beginning two
lyrics and aren't instantly haunted, then it's safe to say you don't possess a soul.
Face it, when we go through our life, we don't plan ahead, thinking that every
moment might be our last. We don't prepare for death whenever we go somewhere,
and as such, there's a number of surprises that could await you at any given
moment. It's very easy to die, yet it's something that's elusive and unpredictable.
At any given moment though, the final sound you might hear is a gun. You might be
shot down, or you might have your windscreen smashed down unexpectedly and
die in that way. Except, there's just more things that we can draw from this, just
based on Steven's vocal tone. He sounds completely miserable and hopeless. He's
not just giving you a warning, like you could sort of sense from the beginning. He
sounds extremely sad. And to me, it sounds like he's addressing the person who
was guilty for the accident here. Which as I mentioned before, is most likely a drunk
driver. He's asking if the guy ever imagined that someone close to him would die
unexpectedly, by way of gun or by smashing windscreen. Those two obviously being
malicious and intentional things, whereas a drunk driving accident is just that, an
accident. But still, you get where he's coming from with that. So with that, it's also
possible that the guy in the car pulled over to do something, perhaps even to help
someone, and got shot themselves, ending up in even worse trouble.
So with that, it just makes the whole living each moment like it's your last idea more
relevant if we're looking at it from a moral standpoint which I said was a possibility
throughout the first verse. Steven follows it off with one even darker verse, though:
"Did you ever imagine the last thing you'd hear as you're fading out was a song?".
Probably the second best line in the entire song, that one is just touching. Again,
Steven sounds to me like he's looking at it from a pitiful standpoint. He's saying that

that's a very sad thing to have happen to you, to just have one insignificant song
playing as the last thing you can hear as you die. Where do we hear about a "song"
elsewhere on the album, though? Mellotron Scratch. And then there's "fading out".
It's interesting to hear Steven say that, because when you think of fading out, you
don't think of dying. You think of disintegrating and fading into the air. Not really...
dying, per se. Oh, but I will explain. In a few moments.
<I>All my designs, simplified
And all of my plans, compromised
And all of my dreams, sacrificed</I>
That is the only thing that Arriving really gives you in terms of a chorus. Obviously
the actual line of "arriving somewhere but not here" isn't it, but this right here is
rather relevant. There's really two characters who we can think of here, and that's
the person who died, and the person who's telling this story. This person is now
talking from the first person, so this is of course their real thoughts on the matter.
Makes it appropriate for a chorus, then. But yeah, all of their plans have been given
up and all of their dreams shattered. All because of this very incident here. To put it
simply, the narrator here had his/her thoughts, dreams, and plans all revolving
around the person who died, and when s/he actually died, that just instantly
shattered everything. Arriving is, therefore, his/her emotions. Those emotions
consist of warnings, forebodings, mourning in pity as we see in that last verse, and
anger as we see later. So that's where this person's trauma comes from.
Where have we seen effects like that on a person? Deadwing. Shallow. Halo. That's
right, the first half of Deadwing was all about the person and how crazy they've
become. We saw in Mikael Akerfeldt's vocal sections in Deadwing how paranoid s/he
(probably she) is. Then in Shallow, the extent of her social phobia. Halo is
essentially about how inwardly revolved she's become at this point. That she's
obsessed with her religion now and it controls her every aspect. Mainly because of
this; she's gone crazy starting from this incident. But wait, wait. Deadwing is a
"ghost story", as it's always been called. How the ghost actually became a ghost is
rather well revealed here, wouldn't you say?
That all fits into place. As natural science has it, ghosts are generally being that still
have strong attachment to the world and are not yet ready to travel to the beyond.
Dying in an unexpected way would obviously do that to you. Same with having a
mutual attachment with someone, as we observe here. So Deadwing is told from
the same perspective as the person here, and Arriving is a look at the past, then.
Assuming the album isn't in completely random order, which honestly wouldn't
surprise me. The ghost comes to visit her, but she feels generally haunted by it.
Obviously. Yet eventually the ghost is able to get through to her, and they start to
enter a bit of a loving relationship all over again, as we see in Lazarus. Then again,
it doesn't exactly end well, as we see in Glass Arm Shattering, but that's a different
story.

So what was that about "fading out"? Indeed, that's exactly what the guy did come
dying. Faded out as he heard a song, but evidently, he came back to the world in a
different form. The actual death is looked at for the last time there, though. And
believe me, Arriving will follow the appropriate atmosphere at all times. It's that
good of a song. The chorus comes in, and it's eerie as ever. Steven on hopeless
vocals, acoustic guitar, bass, and Barbieri not being done. That all adds up. Yet
when the chorus is done, we're almost exactly four minutes in, the song completely
flashes and Steven switches over to electric guitar. Gavin becomes a bit more active
on the drumming, and the song no longer relies on an ominous and haunting
atmosphere to make its presence felt. Now in the switch to electric, we feel more of
the narrator's emotions. As well as maybe the perspective of someone else.
<I>Ever had the feeling you've been here before?
Drinking down the poison the way you were taught
Ever thought from here on in your life begins and all you knew was wrong?
Arriving somewhere but not here</I>
Who knows what perspective the first line of that is told from. It's obviously
something that's extremely important towards understanding what this entire verse
means, but who knows what its actual meaning is. I definitely take a lot of things
from this song from Steven's vocal tone, though. You know you've got an amazing
vocalist on your hands when you can understand the entire song by just listening to
HOW he sings it rather than WHAT he's actually singing, and indeed that's the case.
But you get no real implications from that here, except he's not as sad anymore,
and sounds a little more serious. Almost angry, for that matter, although we'll see
actual anger towards the end of the song. From here though all we can really draw
from it is a slightly more serious feeling, so it might be the narrator being pissed off
at the drunk driver/murderer, but I can't really find any evidence for that. At least, in
this verse. Then again it's actually one of the most relevant things if you're looking
at it with the idea of someone going down their own path, not knowing exactly
where they're going.
Just think about that -- ending up where they started, and just beginning to get a
feeling of that, when it's too late for them to change their mind. And then "drinking
down the poison the way you were taught" is just what they've realized they've
been doing. When someone in their life told them to do something they went along
with it and are only now realizing that all of life as they understood it was wrong. It
fits hand in hand with the idea of "never look for the truth in your mother's eyes",
right? So I'm not going to hide it. I don't actually know what this entire verse means.
Coincidentally though, it's my favorite one. I just love a Porcupine Tree lyric that can
make me sit and think about it and draw theories about it, yet I'm never able to
settle for a conclusive one. This verse does exactly that.

Let me explain it the way I've always thought about it, though. In that breath of
transition from second to third verses, something drastic happens. We can tell that
from how dynamic the switch is from acoustic to electric. It's probably not a change
in the narrator's perspective, since I see no evidence in the verse of him/her talking
to the one who's guilty for this. So, think of it this way. "Ever had the feeling you've
been here before?". That's directly talking about where the guy who died is at this
point. There's two possibilities for that: either he's in the emergency room, or he's
been reborn as a ghost. I definitely don't think it's the first one, since there's
evidence for that in the end of the song, and you can't really follow that through in
this verse. Unless the medicine he's told to swallow is the "poison" he's been told to
take all his life, but that's never been the way I've interpreted it. Let's just say that
now he's "alive" again, looking at the world. He's a bit jarred in the head, but he
gets the sense that he's somewhere where he's been. Now he's looking back at the
vague recollection he has of that moment where he actually died, though. He was
doing something that he had been told to do all his life. I sometimes got the sense
because of the "final sound as a gun" thing, that he was pulling off the road to help
someone and got shot for it, but who knows. That's basically what was happening,
but now that he's dead, he's getting the opportunity to look back at the world. And
now that he can, he's just thinking that everything that he had done up to that point
was wrong. Because he did something and got punished for it, since he ended up
getting killed for it. So that's how he arrived somewhere else but didn't come home.
He went to the beyond, but only for a moment until he could return to haunt the
world as a ghost. Very interesting outlook on it, in my opinion. And while it's a
stretch of imagination like all my theories are, it's in my opinion quite a plausible
idea.
I suppose now would be a good moment to take a short break from my lyrical
discussion of the song and switch over to how impressive it is musically. Gavin is
consistent throughout on his drumming, which is kickass, Barbieri is still there
except not quite as prominent as he was throughout the first part, and Steven and
Colin are creating a riff that is downright addictive. Although it's only been about a
minute or so, by the time the song makes its transition from that verse to the next
chorus, you feel it's been this catchy and heavy for a long time. It's a great feeling.
Mainly because it's gone out from that first little solo, and now Steven is just making
it last as long as he can. When he gets to the chorus though, you focus a little else
on the lyrics and how awesome the actual music is, though. Could also be because
"Ever thought from here on in your life begins and all you knew was wrong" is the
best line in Porcupine Tree's best song lyrically. When the chorus hits, though, the
band kicks it up a notch on guitar and keyboards. It just grows more and more in the
tension. As it does that, though, you get to looking at it from a different perspective.
As you can see, based on my outlook on the song at least, we've gone from the
narrator's perspective to the ghost's. The chorus, which was the narrator's thoughts
on everything, are the ghost's as well. So he's thinking the exact same thing as well.
His designs were simplified, his plans were compromised, and all of his dreams were
sacrificed. Except to pave way for the middle section of the song (yes this is the
eighth or so post and we're only in the middle of the song), the sacrificed part is cut.

It's just:
<I>All my designs, simplified
And all of my plans, compromised
And all of my dreams</I>
I originally didn't like that, but it's a good groove that gives the song the momentum
it needs for the instrumental section. Which is second in my opinion, only to Dark
Matter's exit solo, while Anesthetize takes third place. The guitar and bass both
come to a halt for a moment after that, and then Colin takes over on a fuzzy
bassline for a little bit. That's not going to last very long, though. Soon Steven
comes in and takes over on guitar, and starts playing what sounds like the bassline
from before, except he's taking it just a step or two further. After that break in
tension from earlier, you can just feel the intensity building up more and more, until
Gavin starts getting even more agile on the drums than he was before, and the
guitar gets even heavier. You know at this point, that there's far more than one
guitar there. Steven Wilson, as good as he is, can't play that. Indeed, enter Mikael
Akerfeldt. The frontman of Opeth, delivering a touch of damnation (no pun
intended) onto the song that can only come from him.
So you've heard that Deadwing is a metallic album. It's because of this. Every bit of
darkness that the entire song captured is all thrown into this as well, except on a
much heavier note than it was at the beginning of the song. This is what the entire
album has been building up to. It's arguably the very climax of the entire thing,
even though we're barely halfway through the album. That's how incredible this
moment here is. Akerfeldt gives this song such a tremendous presence, you get the
sense for how little Deadwing would be in general if not for Arriving. It's just that
good of a solo. It's a bit on the long side, that's true. Yet in the two or so minutes
that it lasts, it never at any moment gets old. It's got something in it for everyone,
the way I see it. If you aren't a fan of death metal, you don't need to worry, as
Akerfeldt never enters on vocals (although Steven's touch on Opeth's song Bleak is
fantastic so maybe he should have), and it's still an extremely rhythmic and thought
out solo. And oh my god, Gavin's drums. That's perhaps the best job he's ever done
at it, except for maybe the middle of Anesthetize, which is an equally ridiculous and
awesome solo.
Eventually though the solo gets a little lighter. Akerfeldt knows that he shouldn't be
dragging this out unnecessarily long, but he keeps the solo intrinsic while it lasts. As
he makes complete musical oblivion out of the atmosphere, he starts fading into the
background while Steven starts to play the actual Arriving theme again. It's a little
heavier than before due to Akerfeldt's touch, but you're returning to the scene of
the crime, so to say. In Akerfeldt's last farewell though, he keeps going on his riff,
while Colin's bassline propels it even further into the foreground. Then those two as
well as Barbieri, draw it to a close. Now, I'll be honest. When I first heard Arriving, it
was in a YouTube video that has long since been removed. It was a part one which

didn't have a part two, and it all stopped at a little over eight minutes, where that
solo ends and the song is left in silence for a brief second. Now I knew the song was
twelve minutes long, so I couldn't help but horribly yearn to hear what the second
part sounded like, but that's just a ridiculously climatic finish. I can't even begin to
imagine how the band could have made that better, but it's fantastic.
So, that leaves what's left of it to be considered the "aftermath". That's always the
sense that watching that video gave on the song for me. That that solo was the
finish, and everything that's left was just the coda to that. Because face it, there's
nothing that can actually come after a gallant solo like that. The song reaches that
moment of silence I talked about earlier, as Barbieri who just recently became
active again, brings it to a close. And now we're left with Barbieri as practically the
sole musician here, except Colin, who isn't really doing too much. It's an aftermath
to something incredible, no way around it. And of course, in its overall delivery, it
sounds quite similar to the very beginning of the song. Rest assured though,
Arriving isn't going to just fade out like that, though. It's got some more insight to
treat you with. It's almost an unexpected moment, as the song grows slightly more
tense, and then Steven completely breaks out and starts back up.
<I>Did you see the red mist block your path?
Did the scissors cut a way to your heart?
Did you feel the envy for the sons of mothers tearing you apart?
Arriving somewhere but not here</I>
Thankfully, the band doesn't play the song in the way it was played at the
beginning. That is, mellow and eerie. Nothing against that at all, in fact that's one of
the things that contributes towards making Arriving the masterpiece it is. But after a
tempest like that solo, we're definitely not in the mood for being haunted with
melody anymore. We want some heaviness, and the fourth verse is played exactly
the same way the third verse is. Which is all well and good. Here, in any case, we
can pay some more attention to Steven's vocal style. It's sung rather similarly to
how the third verse was, but we can still sense hints of emotions in it. He's still
incredibly stern, and serious. You can feel anger running down him, passion, and a
kind of connection throughout the whole thing. So, here's my theories.
If we want to keep looking at it from the standpoint of going down a road towards
nowhere, then the "red mist" that he talks about here is anger. Anger directed at
something, which is what fuels the fire for going the wrong direction, following
someone's advice blindly. That's what ends up blocking your path in the end, and it
takes shape as scissors that slice through your body, and it tears you down. I
sincerely doubt that Steven would go through all the trouble of writing Arriving just
for a theme like that, but hey, it's a possibility. Porcupine Tree music is all about
interpreting it the way you want to and as it speaks to you, so I'm not going to say
what's right or what's wrong. Plus anger is definitely something that you can feel
hear. When you see Steven perform this song on the Arriving Somewhere DVD, it

almost looks like he's violently spitting as he sings that, which implies he's definitely
angry and that's a driving emotion behind the verse. Of course, Steven is too good
of a vocalist to yell and growl to express anger, as we've seen in Even Less and
Hatesong, so he just talks directly to the murderer/drunk driver here, as if he's
standing right in front of him with his finger in his face.
"Did you see the red mist block your path?" That's something to ask someone, as if
to make them feel guilty. The red mist could still represent rage, but that's exactly
what he's trying to point out. That he feels enraged because of this incident, and it's
this drunk driver's fault. Did the scissors cut a way to your heart? That's a figure of
speech right there, most likely. That can probably be reworded, though, as "Have
you ever felt scissors cutting through your heart?". Same thing as last, this is the
kind of hell that he's caused him as someone who was extremely close to the
person who died. As a perfect way of rounding the whole song up together, he asks
"Did you feel the envy for the sons of mothers tearing you apart?". I don't need to
go in-depth into that, but it's essentially the same idea. He's asking if he feels guilty
now, if what a ****ing waste of existence he is has set in yet, does he realize how
evil what he did was. It's a strong and rather emotional way to finish the song if
that's the case.
There's also the possibility that we can take this literally, though. Once again,
though, I like to think that the death which occurred was instantaneous and the
person immediately switched to being a ghost. But let's say, however, that he was
found still alive. He'd probably be taken right to the emergency room. The red mist?
Blood. Then the people operating on him, trying to restore him back to health,
they're literally trying to cut through him to his heart, to restore him. They're
"tearing him apart", but as that occurs, he feels envy for them. Because these
people are truly sons of mothers. They're living human beings who are going to
keep going in their life while he's going to die and he knows it. Much as I hate to say
it, it's very possibly what's going on here. It's another one of Steven's enigmatic
touches, so for all I know it could be either of those theories. It's all up to the way
you view the song.
<I>Arriving somewhere but not here...</I>
So, where has he gone? To the emergency room instead of home where the other
person wanted him to go, possibly. Or to the afterlife, where maybe he's resting
there. Or maybe he's been reborn as a ghost, which is a big mystery left here to
uncover. That's why I love how Steven uses the word "somewhere". It gives a sense
of the unknown. And musically, Arriving now draws to its finish. There's one final
guitar riff to treat us off, though it's actually a bit overshadowed by Barbieri's synth
job towards the end. The man is truly remarkable on keyboards, I tell you, despite
how little credit he gets for it. It's a beautiful way for the song to finish off, and as
the centerpiece of the album, Arriving has been faded into well and faded out of
well. That haunting note at the end of Halo which goes right into this song, and then

it ends like that, going right into Mellotron Scratch.

Oh god, Mellotron Scratch. Yes, Arriving just has that much of a presence and
gravity to it that I feel it's necessary for me to discuss the song that comes after it
again in a different light. It's about a person who's rather depressed, to put it
bluntly. Mellotron Scratch is just beautifully melancholy like that, so with the lyrics
what they are as well, it's definitely the impression you get. But let's get to
something else. Notice how the girl there cries at the sound of mellotrons? Indeed.
The connection that we find to that in Arriving is the person and the last thing he
hears as he's fading out is a song. Probably because he had the radio on at the time
and he's listening to something that happens to have a mellotron in it. Mellotron
Scratch, in that case, would then be told from a first person and a third person
perspective at different intervals, but its chorus ("the scratching of the mellotron / it
always seemed to make her cry") would definitely then be about her after this
accident. Because she probably knew somehow that the guy who died was listening
to that song with a mellotron in it when he died, and she knows that. So just the
sound of mellotrons brings her back to that moment of horror, and that's how she
gets her ghosts (once again, no pun intended). Now I know someone will
immediately bring up the idea that perhaps it was the girl that died in the accident,
then. That's not true, since once again it's told from different perspectives in
Mellotron Scratch, and the way I see it, the "ghost" that we see in at least three
songs is definitely a male. And the person whom he's haunting is definitely a
female. I see no other way around that. But yes, we can't figure anything out unless
we've got Arriving.
Arriving Somewhere But Not Here is the alpha and the omega. At least as far as
understanding Deadwing goes. That's been my emphasis throughout this entire
writeup, trying to figure out what Deadwing means. Obviously I've not been
successful, and I never will be until that movie comes out. But here's what I can tell
you. You have to start all your investigations into the album from Arriving. Otherwise
you'll have no clue what's going on. Then you've got to go back to Arriving. There'll
be stuff you still haven't cleared up, and since this song is the centerpiece of the
album, you've got to figure it out and get your other ideas from it. It contains what
you can think of as the climax of the album in its solo, yet its probably the first song
chronologically in the whole album. Mainly because you get the sense of it being a
flashback (and Mellotron Scratch still being the aftermath of it), even before the title
track which you get the sense of it being an overture. But that's what it is. I couldn't
think of any better way that Deadwing could have been structured. And its structure
completely relies around a force known as Arriving Somewhere But Not Here, which
is the living, breathing representative of all that you can hear from Deadwing. You
learn something in the album, it's got a connection to this song. But this song
doesn't derive all of its merit just from how contextually well it fits. It's my favorite
lyrics by my favorite songwriter. It takes a beast of a song to be able to do that. It's
about the mystery of death, one of the greatest philosophical topics you can think
up, but it's clouded even moreso by Steven's songwriting, which hit its pinnacle as
of yet in this song. When you factor in what a technical giant this song is, you see

what I mean. Arriving is a model of perfection and one of the greatest songs that we
will ever know in our lifetimes.
<B>2. Heartattack in a Layby (In Absentia)</B>
It's very rare when you get to hear a piece of music and it completely tears you
down on the inside. A piece of music that, when you're in the best of moods, you
can listen to it and immediately, you'll come away from it with a different emotion
than when you started. There's very, very few songs that can actually do it. Usually
the happy emotions inside you are too strong to be pierced by any kind of music,
but then again, there are some extremely powerful exceptions to that rule. But you
get to wondering, is that a good thing? Is it really a good thing to be able to listen to
a song and feel like **** afterwards, because it's just that heart rending? That's one
of the controversial things in the music world, and one of the things that prevent
most songs from being "objectively" good. Because some people hate anything that
has to do with depression, while others just dwell in it. There are people like me who
lead incredibly depressed lives and become easily distraught by things in their daily
lives, and they just need something that they can relate to. When life becomes too
much for them to turn to, they turn towards their music. And then, there's the whole
group of songs that are sad, but their message wears off after a while. Those aren't
the ones that you look for, you need the ones that are truly staying. The ones that
were written with the most feeling, from a most personal level. This is why I'm a fan
of Radiohead, Porcupine Tree, and Modest Mouse. Bands with generally very
depressing lyrics, but songs that were actually legitimately well written, and by
songwriters that know how to touch you on a deep, poignant level. To be able to get
to you like that is the sign of a master class songwriter. That is why Isaac Brock is a
genius. That is why Thom Yorke is a genius. And that is why Steven Wilson is my
favorite songwriter of all time. Because Steven Wilson wrote Heartattack in a Layby.
The song in my heart that I consider the saddest of all time except for Street Spirit
(Fade Out).
You will see me comparing Heartattack in a Layby to Street Spirit a number of times
in this writeup. And if that is a problem because you have never heard either of
them, then that personally doesn't bother me because you are purposefully denying
yourself of a musical experience. That is because those two songs are just that sad.
Neither of them exactly fit in with the rest of their albums. The Bends, for instance,
can be fairly paranoid, but Street Spirit just goes way over what you've seen yet,
and for that reason, Thom Yorke can't claim ownership of that song. I don't blame
him for that. I wouldn't either, it's too good of a song. Hell, if I wrote Heartattack in a
Layby, I'd go overdose on some prozac and then wouldn't claim it either, because
it's just too much. Some of you guys questioned me as to why I put it so high on my
list, all this time. Some people in general, question what is so great about
Heartattack in a Layby, and why some circles consider it to be one of the finest
Porcupine Tree songs ever. They cite reasons, such as that it's "too simple". "Too
short". Hell, Heartattack in a Layby is the single shortest song on In Absentia, and

one of the shortest on this list in general, yet this is where it is. And yes, from an
external standpoint, Heartattack looks like a fairly simple song. It's little more than
Steven Wilson's vocals on top of acoustic guitar, but with those two instruments put
together, it can destroy you. It can destroy every last bit of joy that lingered in your
heart, and make you feel like committing suicide. It can call you from any situation
that you're undergoing in your life, and make you want to come back to it. So that
you can have something to relate to. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just ****ed
up. But that is the sheer power Heartattack has over my soul and will only maintain.
Heartattack in a Layby is not simple. **** that. It is ANYTHING but simple. I get to
thinking at times that I know why it hits me like a ton of bricks in the way that it
does sometimes. I think that I know it all. But then I come back to it later and I find I
don't know anything. That it hits you in so many different ways at the same time,
that you come away feeling devastated from it. Maybe it's the lyrics. Maybe it's the
numerous times in this song in which the speaker blatantly lies to himself, telling
that he's going to live to see the next day and grow old alongside his lover. Maybe
it's the piano and the acoustic guitar when blended together, each note of which
penetrates my soul and goes straight to my heart. Maybe it's Steven's beautiful
harmony vocals at the end, when he falsely declares to himself that home is waiting
for him, that his significant other is at home waiting for him. Maybe it's the fact he
uses literally four layers of vocals at the end, in the most beautiful display ever put
on tape. Maybe it's the sound of the ambulance, which the speaker can only shun
because he feels he's beyond that. Maybe it all collectively hits me. I honestly do
not know. This song is beyond my understanding. Steven and Barbieri literally
employ every technique imaginable to break you apart, and it works. Oh god, it
works.
Yet Heartattack does this, and it's the #1 song of In Absentia. Though I'll tell you a
little secret: Heartattack in a Layby might not have anything to do with the concept
of the album. If it is, it's a very loose connection that maybe I'm only the one who
can see. I've always thought of it as a victim of the killer in all the misery that he's
brought to feel. But it's the contrast you get presented with in In Absentia that make
it all the more touching, and which makes it my favorite album of all time. Look at
the beginning of the album. Trains. The song in which you can listen to and relive all
your childhood memories in. The song in which you can recall all your nostalgia
from, in a wave of euphoric happiness. As I've already talked about in that writeup,
the anthem of a boy who would later become a psychopath. But at that time,
someone experiencing incredible happiness. He had his decline as he became an
infectious pervert. Gravity Eyelids and Lips of Ashes, all that. Then he got married
and had his midlife crisis. He began to kill people. The Creator Has a Mastertape. An
important song, that ends with an eerie but important message: "Pills and
chloroform / All the pages torn...".
Yes. Pills. Steven put that innuendo at the end of The Creator for a reason. It wasn't
just something that was to woo you like it (admittedly quite well) does. It was an

important message to us all, forewarning what horror was going to occur. And here,
in Heartattack in a Layby, we have the victim of this. That's right, to my knowledge
The Creator gives no hint of the killer slaughtering anyone with pills and whatnot.
Inside itself, that is. Maybe there was someone he was associating himself with at
the time, however, who got close to him. And perhaps took a few too many of the
pills he had to offer. Those pills could go straight to his heart, in a dangerous burst
of fire. Or, maybe, they could be mixed with alcohol. An experience that causes
internal bleeding, something that we could definitely associate with the idea of
"heart attack". In my mind, this association needs to be made. I find it to be
extremely important that the album transitions from ethereal happiness from Trains,
to someone giving their account of suffering and dying through Heartattack in a
Layby. I therefore find it necessary to believe that the killer has a connection to this.
But don't get me wrong. Heartattack isn't about the killer. It's one of those songs on
In Absentia that's about something else. And for all I know, maybe there was no
intentional connection in there. It could just be one of those other songs like The
Sound of Muzak or Wedding Nails that we just associate with the place it is in the
album. Which for all its intents and purposes was good if that were so, since
Heartattack is the perfect bridge between The Creator Has a Mastertape and Strip
the Soul. The reason it's not directly about the killer, though, is for more than just
because it's a person suffering who we know for a fact isn't him. It's because the
person in this song is all of us. He stands for all of us who leave our home after
becoming enraged with someone close to us. Who ignorantly take it for granted that
we're actually going to return home safely, when in reality, we don't know that at
all. This poor person here, and this song as a whole, stands for human mistakes,
despair, and delusion. That's right, things that come from humans. Humanity is
something that the killer, in Collapse the Light into Earth, Trains, and Prodigal
demonstrates. But not humanity on this level. Heartattack in a Layby is
transcendental in its depiction of humanity.
Let's go back to the associations with Street Spirit, since I intend to use them a
bunch in this song. This song and that one are the two saddest ever to me, so I'm
justified in it, considering they use such a similar technique. They both start with a
very soft little riff, that's a little repetitive. Yet repetition is a method which it uses to
get a point across. A point that's just plain hurtful to witness. In both songs, I
consider it to be the riff that's used before the song takes it to the next level, when
the vocals enter. Because to me, in both cases the vocals are what really begin to
affect you. Heartattack in a Layby has about seven layers of things that emotionally
derange me towards the ending, but for now, you just wait for the vocals to enter.
Which isn't that long; only about twenty seconds in. Already you get the sense of a
horrible tragedy about to occur.
<I>I pull off the road east of Baldock and Ashford
Feeling for my cell in the light from the dashboard
Hissing from the road, the smell of rain in the air con

Maybe check the news, or just put a tape on

Lighting up a smoke, I've got this feeling inside me
Don't feel too good</I>
Steven Wilson has described Heartattack in a Layby as being about a man who's
having a really ****ty day. That's about the most real thing that you can possibly
sing about and hit home with. Hopefully none of us can relate to Street Spirit in
which you feel like you're staring straight at the devil (well, I do, but I digress), but
we can all relate to having a terrible day. The first thing we learn about this man,
though, is that he's in his car out on the road. That's not the only thing bothering
him; there's something much greater that's on his mind, but we learn all about that
in due time. The thing is though, that thing which is on his mind is probably the
main reason he's on the road in the first place. But I digress. Let's look at the small
details first and then work our way up.
We start off with that same little acoustic riff that we had before. That's really all
that we have right off the bat, but then once we got to the vocals, we get Steven's
most heartfelt performance ever recorded. Yes, even moreso than Stop Swimming
or Collapse the Light into Earth, this song surpasses the both of them. It sounds like
his normal vocals. But it's just so much more than that. Believe me, you won't feel
like you're just listening to one of his other songs here, because this is just so much
more poignant and touching, I can't even begin to describe it. All the while, you
start to put yourself into the position of this guy who's on the road having a ****
day, all because of Steven's voice. It has its own lure, an atmosphere of sorts, which
it draws you into. Where you will be depressed as hell, let me tell you. But that's
what Heartattack in a Layby is about. It's about a situation that starts bad, and
starts getting progressively worse. There is such a tension in his voice, which he will
just make you feel more and more as the song goes on. Maybe it won't completely
hit you the first time you listen to the song, but believe me, give it time. It'll sink in.
And when it does, it's like a ton of bricks. That's the beauty that just vocals and an
acoustic guitar have.
You can almost see it in that verse, on its own, that he's got some condition and it
doesn't look like it's going to get any better any time soon. He pulls off the road to
get on his cell phone. Why, you ask? Who knows. But obviously, it's not for any good
reason. The way I look at it though, is that he's just had a bad day, but he feels
there's something wrong with him, so then he just pulls over and happens to take
out his cell. The background to that feeling that's just building up inside him, is the
sound of rain pouring down, and his air conditioner. And the smell of that, I suppose.
You could say that it all sounds like a hissing kind of sound. Right now, though, he
doesn't really feel like it's that much of a problem to him. He fiddles with his radio,
deciding whether he should turn on some music or listen to the news. But it doesn't
get any better. He lights up a cigarette to help himself relax, but the feeling inside
him is just intensifying. It's a steady decline.

In transit from verse to verse, though, Steven keeps it as gorgeous as it can possibly
get, until it very nearly pushes the limit. The small instrumental part in between
verses is just the extent of pain that music can cause you. And I mean that as an
emotional thing, as in you just listen to those chords, and it strikes you right in your
heartstrings. That's just what the chords on top of what Barbieri puts on top of it,
does. Let's get to something else -- the sound that Steven makes at the end of that.
He gets done with that last line, and then makes a sound like "yo-de-yo-de-yo-de...".
You hear that, and it immediately flashes a horrible red alarm for you. You know that
something is horribly wrong. And to me, it's the sound of an ambulance. Nothing
can be worse or more horrifying than that, right? That's just the impression you get
when you hear it. It's the first case of Steven using a second layer of vocals in this
song, and the way it's faded out of is bliss. Soon after, though, Steven proceeds to
the next verse.
<I>If I close my eyes and fell asleep in this layby
Would it all subside, the fever pushing the day by
Motor window unwind, I could do with some fresh air
Can't breathe too well</I>
Not as long of a verse as the last one, but after that hauntingly beautiful cry that
Steven just made, it's an amazing way to follow it up. And once again, the tension of
this song is just building up, and if you can't feel how heartfelt this emotion is yet,
keep playing it, until it completely breaks you down. Then just keep playing it more.
Steven's voice is just that ethereal, and will never stop the meltdown it'll cause you.
Here, you can just tell it's getting worse and worse for this guy. The pending heart
attack in a layby is going to happen, but you can tell that he's starting to accept it
slightly here. Here he's pulled off into a service station beside the road, and gets to
thinking he's tired. If he could close his eyes and just drift off, maybe he could wake
up and all those feelings would be gone. Is that it?
I've always seen even more to that, though. When I said that he's starting to accept
that there's something tragically wrong with him, I meant that, and here's where
you start seeing that. He might be trying to do something to help himself, but he
realizes at the same time that there's a problem with him that's not just been
existing now. It's been weighing him down for a while, and once again, just like in
Arriving, you get a sense for that just because of Steven's voice. He's a powerful
vocalist and can convey any number of different emotions and ideas just by singing
like he normally would, and here's yet another perfect example of that. The guy
realizing that he has some kind of fever, but he's kind of thinking at the same time
that he should just lie down and let it consume him. Maybe he's actually looking at
that and doubting it. I wouldn't know. Nonetheless, it's yet another beautiful line.
He finds shortly after, however, that that's not working to fix his problems. So the
next thing he does, is he tries to get some fresh air. He rolls the window down, but
he realizes something else. There's a sensation inside him that's burning, but at the

same time he can't breathe. So he's getting killed in two different ways, as well as
internally, as we're about to see. That's something that works well when you look at
it in the context of the previous line. Where we starts to accept that there's
something horribly wrong with him. So yes, this is his realization right here. Steven's
voice stays as beautiful as ever throughout, with each of his words striking a million
daggers through your heartstrings. Especially the way he says "can't breathe too
well"... that's just beautiful. Then there's another one of those short little
instrumental parts, where the ambulance sound continues.
Now, another word about the ambulance. Remember when you heard it in between
the first two verses? That was a signal, something lighting up inside the guy's head.
A red alarm of sorts, to tell him that he needs to get help, immediately. Maybe he
heard one down the road or something and got him thinking. Here, though, is where
he probably got to calling one. Again, I interpret that last verse as him starting to
accept the fact that he's in the middle of his death. How can you possibly push the
sadness meter even more? Trust me, Steven figured it out and he doesn't hesitate
for one second. Think of what makes this song sad. That ambulance sound is pretty
damn tragic, right? The guitar is pretty sad too, right? Steven's vocals are beautiful,
wouldn't you agree? Think about being hit with all three of them at the exact same
time, along with another layer of inner, unparalled trauma. Along with the growing
tension, that can only lead to a horrible climax. That is what Heartattack in a Layby
then pushes itself towards.
<I>I guess I should go now, she's waiting to make up
She... waits... for... me... Home... waits... for... me...
To tell me she's sorry, and how much she missed me
She... waits... for... me... Home... waits... for... me...</I>
My hat is off to that. The last minute and a half or so of Heartattack in a Layby is the
most devastatingly tragic thing ever put into music. It almost beats Street Spirit and
its lifelong encounter with the devil. Almost. The reason for that, is that Steven
reveals another aspect about the narrator that you probably didn't know about. The
piano leads into this, and then Steven puts in three layers of vocals. You thought
that Heartattack in a Layby was simple? You couldn't be more wrong. This is one of
the most intricately put together moments in music that I've ever had the pleasure
of hearing. It couldn't have possibly been easy to do this. You've got Steven on
vocals, on the ambulance sound, and on the backing vocal of "She waits for me...
home waits for me...". All at the exact same time. That needed coordination.
Coordination is an aspect of complexity, and that's what Heartattack is capable of
doing, without ever getting excessive in the slightest. Now you see why it's my
second favorite Porcupine Tree song, and one of my top ten of all time. Because of
the internal breakdown that happens to me whenever my ears bear witness to this
orgasmic spectacle.
So wait, what was that little aspect that Steven added into the song? Ah, yes. "She

waits for me... home waits for me". Except it's not sung like that. It's sung in a
constant loop under the vocals, as "She. Waits. For. Me. Home. Waits. For Me", which
says a lot. You thought this song couldn't possibly go any further in its wave of
despair, but it finally pushes the absolute limit with that. You find that the narrator
has someone extremely close to him, and maybe he's going to join her here. Or,
maybe, he's STILL somewhat in denial that he's completely ****ed over. Think about
it. He wants to get home, and he still thinks that there's a chance he can make it.
Home is waiting for him, and his wife is there, waiting for him as well. At least, that's
what he's hoping for. That's what he's trying to tell himself that he can get back to,
even though he knows deep down inside that he's going to die. There's no escape,
he's never going to see her again.
But lo and behold, his mind is thinking that. The ambulance is down the road,
probably coming to pick him up. But then Steven's got one more layer beyond that,
and that's his actual voice. It represents everything that's going on at one time, and
it's an organic, heartbreaking combination. He's saying to himself, "I guess I should
go now, she's waiting to make up / To tell me she's sorry, and how much she missed
me". Now we see, most likely, what it is that pushed him over the edge and caused
him to get an attack like this. He's lying down, getting fresh air and whatnot, in the
layby, but nothing's really working. So he tells himself that he should just get going
home, and there his wife will be waiting for him. She'll tell him that she's sorry and
missed him. Why's that? Who knows. Probably because he stormed out of the house
in a rage due to something she did. There were daily problems, which probably
didn't amount to anything anyway, but then he went to go take a little drive to calm
down. Evidently, he's not going to come back, and is never going to see her again,
so that they can tell each other they're sorry. Can it get sadder than that?
Yes, it can. Who says that my theory holds true? There's another possible
explanation for this entire verse as well as the one that follows. Remember when I
said that he had come to sort of a realization and was now in acceptance of the fact
that he was going to die? It's possible that this whole entire verse agrees with that
exactly. "She waits for me / Home waits for me"? Well, guess what. We don't know
what "home is". Where she is, or anything about her, for that matter. Who knows if
she's still bound to the same planet he is? He may just be lying there, thinking that
he's onboard to the afterlife. That his real "home" is waiting for him. Where she lies
there, in slumber, waiting for him to join her. So when he says, "I guess I should go
now"? Yeah, she says he should just go die, now, because she's there in heaven, to
tell him that she's sorry for having been away for so long. She missed him, and he
missed her, because guess what, she died a long time ago. That's an extremely
possible interpretation of the song. Obviously, Steven is extremely tight lipped
about all his songs, and Heartattack in a Layby is no exception. My point is,
however, that that's an extremely likely possibility.
<I>I guess I'm just burnt out, I really should slow down
She... waits... for... me... Home... waits... for... me...

I'm perfectly fine but, I just need to lie down

She... waits... for... me... Home... waits... for... me...</I>
Now the song chooses to push it even further. To explain perhaps a little more, even
if it's not going to clarify which of the two scenarios I spoke of is the actual one. It
does give some hints, however. First of which is when he says that he's just burnt
out. It's Steven's lyric choice that makes this song as breaking as it is. It's enough to
say that this guy is going to die, but that he's just accepting it like that because he's
tired of living, is something even more altogether. It's that underlying tension to
Heartattack in a Layby that makes it the saddest song in Porcupine Tree's library.
Because it never ceases. Not for one ****ing second. It puts death in the most
horrible kind of gravitational light you can't even describe it. It's complex. ****
simplicity, Heartattack in a Layby might be the most complicated song in Porcupine
Tree's discography. Just because of this moment here. All because of what Steven
has done, up to this point. Everything. Not one second of the whole thing wasted.
Never mind. The guy is burnt down, and says that he really should slow down.
That's something that works just fine under either interpretation of the song. Either
he's generally burnt out on life and is ready to go to the afterlife, or he's just
reflected on everything now, in his misery. He's burnt out and should slow down.
Something he could definitely think if he was back on the road, trying to get home.
She... waits... for... me... home... waits... for... me... can this song get any more
tragic? Yeah, and it's about to get there. Tension grows even more as he says "I'm
perfectly fine but I just need to lie down". So, you can think of that as either him
keeping up his denial, or keeping up one of the sickest kind of acceptances you can
imagine. He might be telling himself that he's just fine, even though he knows for a
fact that he's in his dying breath, as he's in the process of dying of a heart attack, or
it's a figure of speech. He might be fading out right there, telling himself, it's alright.
I'm fine, let me move over. So I can die more comfortably. That's horrible. That is
just ****ing horrible. You can't possibly listen to that and not feel like you're right in
that guy's shoes. I don't care what your life experience is, if you have a functional
heart and soul, you attach yourself right into that naturally. Because this song is just
that strong.
Let's attach it to In Absentia again, though. I suppose in either of the two scenarios
you could think of it as appropriate, though if his wife is alive it probably makes
more sense. Let's say he stormed out the house and then got on the road, and
probably his first stop was right where the killer lives. He's a big man, though, and
probably not the person that the killer would just try to chop down. Plus, he's not
the type of person he's interested in raping, so he gives him some pills. Causes
internal bleeding, which is pretty immediate. Probably because it's a terribly
poisonous combination, but then he goes somewhere else. The night starts to dawn
on him, and then he pulls off the road. Because there's something wrong with him,
and he knows it. And it's just getting worse and worse. Until it brings him to this. If
you think of the song this way, you can't possibly forgive him just based on

Collapse. This is how humanity suffers. This is how humanity dies. This is the human
evil, the human trauma, and why they needn't be going on. And it's all that
bastard's fault for this entire song. How does the guy react?
<I>We'll grow old together
We'll grow old together
We'll grow old together
We'll grow old together
We'll grow old together
We'll grow old together</I>
Pure denial, that's how. This is beautiful, but it's even more haunting than it's been.
Once again, though, it works in either of the two scenarios. How it fades out,
though, is just like what you'd imagine it. In something that destroys even the
implementation Glass Arm Shattering used of a similar technique, the layers just
build up more and more. The ambulance is more prominent, the "She waits for me...
home waits for me..." is even more in the front, but Steven manipulates his voice to
draw you right into the moment of his inevitable death. We'll grow old together. She
waits for me. We'll grow old together. Home waits for me. It just keeps growing,
while that backing music, which is essentially the same as the little instrumental
interludes, just gets more and more horrible. You can feel how weak Steven's voice
is. He's simulating the true death, until finally, it all shatters. We'll grow old
together... that all breaks, along with the "She waits for me...", etc. He stops being
able to speak, because the heartattack has landed its final blow. His heart finally
fails, then he can't think anymore, so so much for the backing vocals. As for the
ambulance, though, it just keeps going. Yo-de-yo-de-yo-de-yo-de-yo... how can you
not think that an ambulance. It's so tender and well placed in there, you can't
possibly explain it any other way.
But what was I saying about how it works under either scenario? Yes, if he goes up
into heaven, then he'll be with his wife for eternity. Then they can grow old there.
But on the other hand, maybe he actually STILL thinks that he can make it home to
his wife, because he needs to. He needs to talk to her. Then maybe it'll be alright,
then maybe he can actually live out the rest of his days. I think that's what
Heartattack in a Layby is trying to communicate to us all. That this isn't how you
should behave. You need to keep on good terms with the people you love, because
you never know what sick, messed up mother****ers are out there. People who
would do this to you. People who would dissociate you utterly from everything that
you love and care for, by letting you die. It's songs like this that make you actually
realize how death truly is the most evil thing in existence. This is suffering. In
musical form. And it's otherworldly.
So, is it appropriate that this song took the crown as the #1 song from In Absentia?
Absolutely, and I almost crowned it as the #1 song in the band's discography. That
is how amazing this song is. Nothing can compare. Trains is almost as good. Plus I

love Blackest Eyes and Prodigal to death. It's my favorite album of all time, and it's
only appropriate that my favorite song from it would be something that's completely
mind blowing, and Heartattack in a Layby is just that. Did it blow your mind in the
way that you would naturally expect? Probably not. This song is anything but
progressive. Hell, it's the shortest song on the entire album. Plus, look at it. We just
spent an entire concept album talking about a serial killer. This song, on the other
hand, is lightly, if at all connected to said serial killer. Plus, In Absentia is an album
filled with heavy and metallic riffing that took the direction of Porcupine Tree to a
whole new level. Heartattack isn't representative of that. It's sad, short, quiet, and
soft. Albeit complicated, but it's still hardly a rock your face off song. So why does it
take the top spot?
You may be forgetting another underlying aspect of beauty within In Absentia, that
makes it the titan of the album it is. It's that it's incredibly dark. That's the reason it
uses the metallic riffs to communicate its points. The midlife crisis in Wedding Nails,
as well as the mental destruction that takes place within The Creator Has a
Mastertape and Strip the Soul, which is also communicated through the killer's
destruction of other humans... all because of the album being such a dark ****ing
collection of music. That's what the album is all about. In Heartattack, however,
Steven decides to use another method to convey darkness. He makes it the saddest
song he's ever penned. Stop Swimming, Feel So Low... this is beyond all of that.
Heartattack is the true ballad of his, and for that reason, I would consider it to be his
signature song. Because he's a human being that can describe to you exactly what
it means to be human. And to die as a human, which is what this is all about. If you
want to see the signature of Porcupine Tree as a band, that's where my #1,
Anesthetize, comes in. In terms of Steven Wilson as a musician, though, there's one
reason he's my favorite of all time. That reason is Heartattack in a Layby.
<B>1. Anesthetize (Fear of a Blank Planet)</B>
...Okay. There's a lot for me to say about this, as you guys all know. Most of it
consisting of my stream of consciousness interpretation of this absolute
masterpiece of a song, but I've got to put things into perspective. Porcupine Tree
have been going at it for a long time. Since 1987, as a matter of fact. And twenty
years later on their newest album, Fear of a Blank Planet, they release the song that
I consider to be the absolute most amazing thing they've ever put out. And as is
fair, I place said song at #1 on my list. This is an extremely risky thing to do, putting
a song on a band's newest album at the top. If the #1 song comes from the very
newest release, this says a lot about the future of the band's stuff, if you ask me.
That #2 came from their third to last and #3 from their second to last, and then #1
on their actual last... that's an incredibly pleasing thing to behold. It can only mean
good things for the future. So even if this song in and of itself is the most
pessimistic thing ever, I'll start this thing off on an optimistic note and say this:
Anesthetize is my absolute favorite Porcupine Tree song and is a contender for the
greatest song ever. In my eyes, at least. But it may not maintain that #1 spot

forever. Porcupine Tree is quite able to release material that surpasses it. Or maybe
not. I couldn't tell you.
Isn't that an exciting thought? That Porcupine Tree can just keep releasing material
that very easily knocks off the rest of the stuff from their discography? It just excites
me more and more for that upcoming album that should hopefully be coming out in
2009 or 2010. Maybe Anesthetize won't be #1 then. It might be surpassed by some
other mind blowing epic, or some other heart breaking piece of music in the likes of
Heartattack in a Layby, a song that got in the top five and was also a song that I
considered for the number one spot. Or it might be a mixture thereof. Then again,
that'd be overkill because Anesthetize already perfectly fits that description. I guess
the first thing that deserves attention is the fact that it's eighteen minutes. That
easily makes it the centerpiece of Fear of a Blank Planet. Something that comes to
represent the entire album as a whole. And indeed, it's like it has its own gravity.
You get to dividing the album into two parts, much like Deadwing, of what comes
before and after this song.
But where was I? Oh yeah, the fact that Anesthetize fills the role as both the
depressing song of the album as well as the epic. Those are obviously the two
demoninations of their albums which I like most. Look at the top two songs on
Deadwing for instance: Arriving and The Start of Something Beautiful. I don't lie
when I say that Anesthetize mixes the two worlds together amazingly. It IS of course
the two things that Steven does best. He's said the sad songs are the one he finds
the most beautiful. Plus we've already established how great he is at making long
prog songs, so when you put the two together, you end up with a masterpiece. Plain
and simple. But why is it that Anesthetize is actually, quote on quote, "depressing"?
Here is the only explanation I can offer: it is almost too real of a depiction of the
teenage life that we know of today which is in a steady decline and will end in
disaster. From beginning to end that is exactly the essence of what Anesthetize
captures.
Yet this would be nothing more than a perfectly normal song, were it not written by
Steven Wilson. Anyone can write a song about the decline of society as far as
teenagers and such are concerned, but only Steven can breathe life into it and
make it feel truly real to you. That is because even though he's in his forties at this
point, he can actually relate to the world as he sees it today, and he understands.
He understands why teenagers as he knows them are in the steady decline that he
observes. It is partly because of technology, and that's something that Fear of a
Blank Planet puts a lot of emphasis on. When you're on your Xbox, your computer,
or your cell phone for too long, you start to get drawn into that world and detached
from everything else, and then that's what really does ruin you as a human being in
actual society. It's partly because of pills and prescription drugs. Another form of
detachment. But then, let's say we're actually going back to society after being
indulged in our own little worlds and not being able to relate to it for long enough.
That's EXACTLY what we're going to feel. Detached from everything. We can be

standing there in our own little fake relations with other people, but not able to feel
anything from it. Because that's all your relationships become after that period of
time. Artificial.
Detachment is exactly the thing that Anesthetize talks about in its eighteen minutes
of instrumental and lyrical grandeur. Exactly it deals with things on an entirely more
personal level. I'll say it once more: Fear of a Blank Planet is divided into three
sections. The title track, Anesthetize, and the My Ashes/Sentimental/Way Out of
Here/Sleep Together section. All of them are rather independent of each other in the
way I see it. Then again, the title track is a lot more general. It's told from a first
person perspective for the majority of it, but you never really get immersed into it
and feeling what Steven talks about in your own guilty type of way or anything. It's
just a catchy, kickass song that nearly made the top ten, but is great in its own
right. The four song section tells a story from beginning to end, but it ends in a
rather extreme way through Way Out of Here/Sleep Together, so you likely aren't
going to become as emotionally drawn into it as you would like to be. Moreover
you'll just be jamming to how heavy a majority of those songs, and My Ashes and
Sentimental, the ones that are slower and a bit more lyrically driven, they're not
really as easy to relate to. Great songs, but they lack a bit of that imagery which
Anesthetize conveys to a t. And detachment is a big theme in all of those songs.
Anesthetize is the one that actually evokes Steven's power to write a song and
actually make that all truly surreal/real to you, though. He does by telling a three
part epic story about a teenager who's just like us. Except he's done whatever to
himself and feels himself fading away, and then when he comes back to society as
we know it, he's a zombie and his life has been completely thrown away. THAT is
Anesthetize in a nutshell. Yet a nutshell isn't how we do it here. It's an eighteen
minute prog song, dammit. To exactly explain why this clicks with you as much as it
does, let's start with the actual meaning of the title. "Anesthetize" obviously means
to induce anesthesia.
anesthesia (v)
loss of sensation and usually of consciousness without loss of vital functions
artificially produced by the administration of one or more agents that block the
passage of pain impulses along nerve pathways to the brain
We don't need to literally interpret every part of that, but there's some big things in
there which made Steven choose it as the title for this song here. For one thing, the
loss of sensation. That's the very thing that causes isolation from the society around
you even while you're a part of it, so that's obviously a big thing. There's also a loss
of consciousness in here, although that's not an extremely major part of the song
thematically. Another thing that's also not extremely important there but
nevertheless existent in the definition is the blockage of pain impulses in the
nervous system. Well, that's exactly what we use pills and prescriptions for in real
life. To cure ourselves of pain. It doesn't necessarily have to be in our nervous
systems, but that's what we use them for, basically. To get away from the pain that

anything in the world causes to us. Anesthetize, then, is about the disaster that
results from such indulgence going too far.
Yet once again Steven will make it incredibly real once said disaster hits and a life is
ruined. Then with the backing piano that comes in at that point, your mind will be
completely blown. That's what I love about Anesthetize. It's an eighteen minute
three part epic, and not one second of it is wasted. From the first second, it gets
your attention, and it never lets up. It's got three guitar solos, one performed by
Alex Lifeson, a rather sullen first part, a quite heavy second part, and then an
extremely depressing and melancholy third part. How convenient, because Steven
in that time period manages to capture every single one of the many things that he
does well in his songwriting, without one moment of weakness. Anesthetize is
elegant like that. You'll constantly be paying attention to the lyrics, but musically it's
incredible as well. Starting from the very beginning. At this point, I would like to ask
the few of you who are daring enough to read this writeup, to start the song on a
quality pair of headphones. Begin with that surreal voodoo of a riff that opens the
song up, immerse yourself in the bassline oncurring, and then listen and wait as
Steven opens up the lyrics.
<I>A good impression of myself
Not much to conceal
I'm saying nothing
But I'm saying nothing with feel</I>
Excellent. Steven opens with a great deal of emotion, and places a lot of emphasis
on the word "impression". Really stresses the dramatic impact of the word out, and
it's a great feeling. If you remember, Steven has said that in the creation of Fear of
a Blank Planet he took influence from the book Lunar Park. First line of that novel:
"You do an awfully good impression of yourself". And the way I understand it, that
was an insult based on a Halloween costume or something or other. So how does
that fit in with the very first line of Anesthetize? Ask yourself in the first place what
a costume is. Something to hide your identity into, correct? You can hide yourself
away inside one for whatever reason, but the very essence of it is a fake vision of
yourself to broadcast to the world. Yes, I used the word fakeness. Something that
comes into play a bit throughout Anesthetize. Particularly in the first line, at least in
the way I see it. So that's exactly what Steven chooses to get at from the very getgo.
It's a good impression of himself, this fakeness that he demonstrates to the world,
and acts in his place. As that occurs, what you can best describe as the "real" him is
sleeping inside. Or dead, or whatever? Yeah, that would be right, dead. Because he
says right then that there's not much to conceal. There's nothing inside that fake
and hollow, empty shell that he has to give to the world, so what does it matter. He
says nothing, and there's no emotion to what he does have to say. No relevance in
the world, and no thought behind it. Because again, sensation is something that he

lacks. Getting back to the title at hand, here.

So, now the question is. Can you relate to that? I can understand if you can't,
because Anesthetize isn't close to being done with the imagery that it presents to
you. If that is the case, however, what were your thoughts at the time? You might
not have been able to say anything relevant at hand, but there was definitely a
function mind going on behind all of that. Maybe the thoughts were something like
this.
<I>I simply am not here
No way I...
Shut up, be happy
Stop whining please</I>
Not a very unusual statement to make. Steven keeps the song entirely in the first
person because once again, he's stressing something. This is something that you
ARE supposed to relate to. Maybe the beginning extremities are a little too much for
you to sink your teeth into at a personal level, but these thoughts are exactly what
you can recognize from your own existence. Throughout that entire verse, there's
been a very tight set of drums and guitar, but it just reaches another level of
eeriness once it reaches this "chorus" of sorts. Anesthetize has three different
choruses, one for each part, and this is the one for the first part. It's meant to be a
sort of recurring thing, because you KNOW that no matter what you do, you're in
your own personal sort of decline.
As I was saying about that as a statement, we all know how common it is to say "I'm
not here". That you're there, living in the world, but existing as a sort of lifeless and
thoughtless being, and not really contributing anything to the society that you're a
part of. How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead with a rather similar statement
inside it, anyone? So in a way, this chorus right here is a set of reactions to what
you've become. You try to hide it away from the world that you're a part of, but it's
impossible. Eventually you crack. Because inside your head, you're thinking: "I
SIMPLY AAAAAM NOT HEEEERE!" Yes, that was a rather accurate depiction of the
way that Steven sings it. He wants you to feel how ****ed up he is, and how bleak
and desolate that he feels. He then forms another thought: "No way I...". But he
doesn't have the words to complete it. Now the next line, whether it's from him or
his parents or anyone else is unknown, but that's not so much the issue. It's a
contrast to that whole thing. This is a direct example of that theme from Fear of a
Blank Planet's title track that it enters towards the end: "Bipolar disorder / Can't
deal with this boredom".
Someone deep down inside him is telling him that he needs to shut up and stop his
whining, and be happy. That is typically something that you would expect a parent
to say. The fact of the matter is, that a number of them only pretend that they can

see the actual problems that you face. They're too far removed from the actual
issues that teenagers face in our world, of which there are many, because that was
a part of their life far too long ago. They reason that you have so much more than
they ever did in their lives. Example, cell phones, computers, Xboxes, all that other
technological stuff. But while that can addict you and give you entertainment for a
long time, eventually it's going to wear thin. Eventually you will realize the
meaningless of your own existence and become desensitized to everything around
you. If that's what your entire world is wrapped around, that is. Who knows what the
social status of this guy is, or what the extent of his lonesomeness in the world he
lives in is, but that's obviously the problem. It's something that his parents can't
understand, in any case, whether it's they who are talking to him now, or himself to
himself. It's easy for them to tell him to stop whining, but either way he's trying to
convince himself deep down that he has everything as well. It's obviously a failure
though and it's merely a conflict in thoughts. Such is the damage of social
anesthesia.
<I>And because of who we are
We react in mock surprise
The curse of there must be more
So don't breathe here
Don't leave your bags</I>
Now we go back from his thoughts, back to what he actually experiences in what
can be referred to as his actual life. He refers to himself and people that are like him
as "we", groups himself inside that type. Or stereotype, whatever you choose to call
it. Again, that just shows you more and more what his opinion of himself is. He
continues the parallelism with himself and the other desensitized sheep around
himself, and takes about "the curse of there must be more". That's a relatively
straightforward line right there. Teenagers, in that they get one possession after
another, but they never have enough of 'em. Or beyond that, they get all the
material possessions that they ever wanted, but they find something lacking at the
end, because they're locked in their own little zone and dissociate themselves from
all of the world. Steven says after that, "So don't breathe here / Don't leave your
bags", which is a particularly haunting lyric. To me, it just follows off from what
Steven was talking about earlier with the curse. So that's about it.
The song returns to that chorus again, which is as amazing as before. As dark, as
atmospheric as ever, and you're about to have the perfect musical representation of
everything that's supposed to be going on. From the teenage problem, to the
treatment that he's about to receive. All courtesy of a special guest by the name of
the Snow Dog. Also known as Alex Lifeson. The chorus ends in roughly the same
way as it did earlier. It reaches its climax, with Steven calling "Stop whining,
pleeease" and then it breaks loose. You feel like you're being immersed into a wave
of static electricity, which is most likely due to the effect he puts on his guitar there.
A moment of acoustics for just a brief little bit, but then the song comes back in full

swing, on an extremely note. While Gavin hammers down on his drums, a new
guitar enters. It's a bit lighter than it was previously, but what's about to begin is an
incredibly dynamic solo which is supposed to represent a complete transition from
one state of mood to another. Mainly brought on from prescription drugs and
whatever other things the teenager is doing here to give himself treatment.
At about 4:57, the bass gets a bit heavier, and then the song shifts in its delivery.
The synth becomes a bit more active here, although it's only for a quick few bits.
And although Lifeson takes a short little break in between the two sections, he's not
done by any means. Plus there's always Gavin, who hasn't stopped for one second
through this whole thing. As it nears the six minute mark, Lifeson is still going
strong. He, and the keyboards draw this entire instrumental section to a close, then
suddenly the song becomes remarkably heavier. Gavin changes his drum beat
around, and Steven returns as the lead guitarist. So in the end, that was an
incredibly good solo. And you can feel through the entire thing if you're a Rush fan
like I am, how very similar it is to the guitar work in their songs. While it's probably
not even my favorite instrumental section in this song, it does an extremely good
job transitioning from the first part to the second part, and you end up drowning
yourself in it. You end up losing yourself in the drugs that activate someone in the
way they do here. Obviously, when this song is played live, Lifeson isn't with them,
but Steven Wilson and John Wesley do a great job of doing this part of it. They don't
copy it note for note, which is a good thing. Only Alex Lifeson can play that part
there and make it meaningful in the way it is, but the band is more than able to
make the most out of it without him. Still, it's more than pleasing to hear him do a
guest solo in an epic, just like Mikael Akerfeldt did in Arriving. And before you know,
the second section begins.
<I>The dust in my soul makes me feel the weight in my legs
My head in the clouds and I'm zoning out
I'm watching TV but I find it hard to stay conscious
I'm totally bored but I can't switch off</I>
The second section of Anesthetize is known as The Pills I'm Taking. It's probably the
most well regarded of the three sections, and for relatively good reason. Because it
kicks ass. It's by far the heaviest of the three, and it's what I like to think of when
people say Fear of a Blank Planet is Porcupine Tree's heaviest album. It's because
the middle of Anesthetize has its own gravity. It's a little before about the center of
the album, and it's just electric. You still get the feeling of electricity after Lifeson's
solo is over. You feel lightning working in your soul, putting into place its effects on
you. Such is the power of pills and prescription drugs, which is definitely what the
middle of Anesthetize is about. The newfound heaviness is appropriate, though.
You're listening to the first section and it's a lot darker and more melodic, but that's
because it's about a teenager who's most likely staring at his walls and frustration.
Not doing anything crazy. In the second section, though, we get a further look at his
actions.

About seven minutes, when Steven gets to his vocals, the guitar stops. Edwin's
terrific bass line doesn't, but he makes it a bit quiet for the time being. It's still a
dark atmosphere, but it's going to alternate between that and the more fiery
chorus. Steven immediately starts talking about the dust in one's soul. In a very
eerie voice, I might add. In other words, one's mind becoming clogged, and the
person becoming gradually desensitized. But another way of looking at it is, the
drugs are getting to his head, and he's becoming numbed. Don't know about you
guys, but I've experimented with a few illicit drugs, and you can get to feeling heavy
in the legs. In this section, though, the guy is staring at his TV. Or rather, THROUGH
his television and into blank space, because it does nothing for him anymore. And
because of the overdose of drugs in his system, he's at an equilibrium between
wanting to collapse, and not being able to doze off. It's boring, and it's
desensitizing. It's just anesthesia at its essence.
<I>Only apathy from the pills in me
It's all in me, all in you
Electricity from the pills in me
It's all in me, all in you
Only MTV and cult philosophy</I>
Gavin smashes on his drums and segues that into this chorus, which is the most
fiery, energetic thing that the song has to give. And indeed, as a chorus it's
extremely memorable, and a tad bit better than the first chorus if I do say so myself.
Apathy is an easy word to recognize right off the bat. Stemming from apathetic,
which is subdued emotions. That's what the pills do, is they anesthetize you.
Desensitize you, turn off your nerves, so you can't feel the pain around you. But
then you just become bored and enter a horribly crippled state of mind. The "it's all
in me, all in you" is almost anthemic in its own sort of way. Though the way that I
look at it is, he's feeling apathetic because of the all the drugs in him, and that's
how he's going to see everything else around him. Everything else is dead to him,
because that's just the kind of vicious cycle that the pills cause.
Electricity from the pills in me. Yes, the pills give him some sort of energy, and
that's the sort of thing that we're going to see in the next section. Because as we've
already established, the guy is addicted to them and needs them to feel really any
kind of emotion. On the first section, he showed little to no emotion. As we have felt
from the music. In this section, we've got all of the emotions that he can muster.
And the only things that he gets a feeling for in life, which is MTV and cult
philosophy. Or cod philosophy as some people hear it, but they mean essentially the
same thing, so it's not really important. MTV is a load of crock that you need to have
your mind completely turned off to enjoy. And cult philosophy is just something that
he can live by. Now, with that done, Steven starts riffing on his guitar for about
fifteen seconds, then heads to the next verse.

<I>We're lost in the mall

Shuffling through the stores like zombies
What is the point, what can money buy
My hands on a gun and I find the rage, God tempts me
What did you say, think I'm passing out</I>
Same procedure as before. Bass and drums are the primary instruments throughout
this, and Steven's vocals are eerie, because his focus here is on what's going on in
the guy's head. Told you that the guy had some energy inside himself though,
because here we have him in the mall with his friends. Presumably with his friends,
because it talks about "we" here. And they're moving in sort of a gang, cult fashion,
shuffling through the stores like zombies. Mainly because they're probably all on the
same prescription drugs and feeling the exact same sort of thing. The guy says,
however, that there's no point to it. That money can't buy anything that'll ease the
pain he's feeling inside and using pills to treat. But as we all know, he's internally
fighting "the curse of there must be more". That, and he and his friends are more
than likely extremely bored and have nothing else better to do except trivial things
like that.
The next line is one that, though delivered the same way that most of the entire
lines have been, just hits home with you a bit more profoundly. The reason being, it
shows you the degree to which the guy is suffering here. He says his hands are on a
gun and he feels the rage, but somehow I don't think that's to direct it at other
people. There's no doubt in mind that that's in his head, but he says that God is
tempting him. I think that's kind of important, because you can feel almost tempted
by God to leave the world and join Him, at times. But he's too cowardly to do that.
That, and he just doesn't have the energy. He can stand there with the gun at his
head, threatening others that he's going to pull the trigger, but as he speaks about
that, people discourage him. He wants to tune them out, but the pills are doing that
for him. He gets dizzy inside, and can't pull the trigger anyway, because he's
collapsing. And with that, the song transitions to the chorus again. It's more intense
though, and you feel like something is going to emerge from that.
And emerge it does. It's very close between the ridiculous instrumental section that
comes from that, and Alex Lifeson's solo between the first and second parts, but hot
damn, I really do think this one beats it. Though it's unfair to compare the two,
because they do two completely different things. Bass falls into place, Gavin keeps
doing what he's been doing, but Steven delivers a solo with more flair than he ever
has before, ever. Sure, there may be the Arriving solo, but that was with Mikael
Akerfeldt's help. Eventually the guitar slows down for a brief moment, as it takes the
role of some electric backup to the drums. Gavin is a COMPLETE monster during this
part of the song. Like you can't even imagine, this is practically his drum solo. He
paves the way right into the synth for coming in. That's right, thought Barbieri
wasn't going to show you what he's made of as well? He does. Deliveries a very
energetic synth portion, while Gavin still keeps smashing his drums. It's hard to

exactly describe the feelings that you're supposed to be experiencing here, but I
think of it as a sort of medical treatment thing.
But more on that in a second. The instrumental section isn't over after the synth is
done. It goes back to the kind of thing that it was doing earlier. A fast riff, but an
emotional one. Porcupine Tree have always known how to put together a riff that is
fast, aggressive, and technically impressive, but actually packs some emotion
behind it. Gavin keeps it entertaining, Barbieri and Steven keep it emotional. It's the
perfect mix. Eventually though, the band goes into overdrive. You almost envision a
swirl of psychedelic colors at that point. Gavin hitting his drums lightning fast, the
guitar and its almost circular riff, and then the chorus again. That's right, forgot that
we're still in the second section of Anesthetize? Oh yeah.
<I>Only apathy from the pills in me
It's all in me, all in you
Electricity from the pills in me
It's all in me, all in you
Only MTV and cult philosophy</I>
Falls right into place. In fact, though, it's only a medium that comes about three
quarters of the way through the instrumental. Maybe a little more than that, but it
only breaks it up for a little bit. The second part of it starts the same way the first
part it did. With Steven in his incredible guitar solo, but it's a little faster this time.
There's almost background noises behind it as well, which only enhances the feeling
I get whenever I listen to it that draws me to some medical place. Because the
second part and the third part are distinctly different. Like, extremely, they're barely
even comparable. So you know that something dramatic had to have happened in
between the two. More than likely, the pills in him just got a bit too much for his
own good, and he went into a coma. So then he went to the hospital.
That guitar that we've hearing? Indeed, every time that this song gets electric
guitar sections, it's because of the pills working in him. Giving him some electricity,
but he's becoming completely unresponsive now, because his mind has been close
to blown out. So that synth and everything, that's him at the hospital, and the
medical people are doing what they can to help him out. He has a temporary
relapse of consciousness in between, though. He returns in approximately the same
state of mood he was in before. Just like getting drunk and going to sleep and then
waking up with a sort of hangover afterwards, I guess. It's probably going to start
with the same things you were feeling before, though you're too worn down to feel
anything, really. He's still thinking, MTV. Cult philosophy. Pills in me. Electricity. That
kind of thing. But then he immediately passes out again. The hospital continues to
work on him. So do the pills. But they're dying. They're beginning to fade out, as we
can tell from the electric guitar, which is gradually becoming a little less prominent
throughout this whole section. Just like that big mesh of everything that came
before. That's a battle of all the forces on the guy at the same time. The pills, the

medical treatment. Everything going crazy. And it gives him that dosage of
consciousness.
Yet it doesn't work for that much longer. He passes out again, Steven returns on
guitar. But it's a much more short lived section of guitar this go around. It goes to
that same type of drum section that came afterwards before, and then it stops.
Right now, imagine the pills just dying, but the guy is still in the coma. He's still
completely under the weather, and it's appropriate in the song's video. You know,
when it's all dark, and you're just seeing that pill float around. Here, though, that's
all over. The pills are done, and we're left with just the fuzz of bass, but then the
keyboards come back. See how extremely different this sounds from anything so
far? Anesthetize is almost two songs: the first two sections, and the last one, they're
so different. Lyrically, as well as musically. While the first two are moody and eerie,
they've got their heavy moments. This one is pure melodic. And it's one of the most
heartrendingly beautiful things ever, except for of course Heartattack in a Layby. For
two main reasons, which I'll get into one second. Steven comes back on acoustic
guitar, and Barbieri is in full front with keyboards. Then vocals enter.
<I>Water so
Waaaater so
Waaaater so warm that day
I counted
I couuuunteeeed I counted out the waves
As they broke
As they broke into surf
As they broke
Into surf, I smiled into the sun...</I>
What is this I'm listening to?! Is this even the same song?! Hey, I don't care,
because this is ****ing beautiful. But yeah, what I just gave you above is an
extremely accurate depiction of how Steven sings it. If you're listening to that for
the first time without a lyrics sheet or anything in front of you, you're gonna have no
****ing clue what Steven is saying. Except you'll get a feeling that what you're
listening to is amazing, if you have any soul at all, that is. But this is just a classic
Steven Wilson technique that's being applied here. His layered vocal thing. He's
done it to great success in plenty of songs. Mellotron Scratch, Glass Arm Shattering,
plus I've already talked about (or will since I'm writing this writeup before that one)
how awesome he is in Heartattack in a Layby towards the ending, with the two
layers. It's one of the most harmonious things ever put to tape. And it's ethereal.
This part of the song will detach you from wherever you are and draw you into the
atmosphere.
Here's one of my only complaints with the video of this song. It shows waves, for
the last four minutes. That's just it, water and waves. Though if you're like me and
actively get pictures in your head when you listen to music, you ARE going to

envision a man standing on a beach. Looking at the waves, no less, but that's just it.
It's gotta be on a beach. Not just the water. Because you're going to get drawn into
that, where the guy can look back on his life. Which reminds me, getting back to
what happened to that guy. He finally woke up from his coma. Presumably, he was
okay and didn't come away with any horrible mental traumas or illnesses from it,
although more than likely he was suffering from one in the first place. The
anesthesia is gone from him. He can actually <B>feel</B> things now. But that's
no good. Because more than likely, an incredible amount of time has passed.
And getting back to the music, I will say that without any doubt in my mind, this is
my favorite part of the song. Not even a comparison with anything else, this just
shatters everything else. I've always had a kick for songs with a great ending, and
Anesthetize has the most amazing ending of any song this side of A Change of
Seasons by Dream Theater. The reason for that, is because this part of the song,
instrumentally, focuses on my favorite two favorite members of Porcupine Tree,
doing what they do best. Steven Wilson on acoustic guitar, and doing his layered
vocals. I could cream myself whenever he does either, let alone puts them together.
And then Richard Barbieri. Whom I regret that I couldn't have talked about more
during this list, because he really is a fantastic musician (and he shares the same
first name as me which grants him instant cool points). But what he excels at its
creating a tremendous atmosphere. And what he makes you feel here is desolation.
Desperation, too, but you'll see exactly what I mean soon in. Bottom line is, it's got
an almost horrible inner beauty to it that just rends you on the inside. And the way
the song goes into this, when Barbieri first gets going on the synth is almost a sort
of voodoo. Which makes the guy awakening a lot more real to you, I suppose. That's
just the two ingredients that make the third part of Anesthetize the best thing that
Porcupine Tree have yet done in their career, but that's not to put Gavin down
either. He's STILL going at it on the drums, and it only helps the atmosphere. What
you're witnessing is Steven's greatest vocal performance ever. The layered vocals
stop, though.
<I>Water so warm that day
I was counting out the waves
And I followed the short life
As they broke on the shore line
I could see you but I couldn't hear you</I>
Acoustic guitar still remains in place, and Barbieri moves to piano, where he
continues to make this an emotional override. Now it's really time to look at the
message that Steven is trying to get at with this section. Let me just address a
couple things about the anesthesia thing. Remember, this song IS called
Anesthetize. In both the first line of this song and the first line of the chorus, Steven
talks about the water being warm. That is extremely important. First of all it puts the
setting right into place, which is the beach where a man can observe the waves
passing by. But beyond that, the guy is actually FEELING its warmth now. He can

actually tell that it's warm, and enjoy something beautiful in nature like that. He
wouldn't do that in the past. He would just be too engaged in his cult philosophy
and pills to be able to tell that. But now he's actually looking out into the sea at how
beautiful and warm it is, and just observing the waves. Which is what he's doing
here, is counting them out. Then not only that, but he SMILES INTO THE SUN. He's
got some emotions going through him. What the root of those is, I will get to
momentarily, but he's experiencing something. We went from him not being able to
say anything with feel, to him being able to smile into the sun. That's just ****ing
raw, people.
Let's put it back into the scenario for a moment though. We're in the future, right. A
tremendous amount of time has elapsed since the guy got on all of his prescription
meds and had that overlapse. Now he's on the beach, over to one side, looking at
the waves. Most likely, he's reflecting on all the mistakes he's made throughout his
entire life. He does that, as he counts out the waves. Hell, he even says it himself.
"And I followed the short life". The short life is his memories. Because again, I put
emphasis on the amount of time that's passed by. It's been so long, because life is
so long when you live it, yet so short when you look back. The waves break on the
shoreline, and there's someone across on the other side of the beach. He's
observing her. He can't hear what she says, but it's obviously someone who's been
important to him all his life. And he can see her.
<I>You were holding your hat in the breeze
Turning away from me in this moment
You were stolen as black across the sun</I>
That's pretty much a standard thing, isn't it? In music, to find a story about a man
getting his life ruined by some girl. Anesthetize, I suppose, is no different in the end.
Because that's what it all amounts to in the end. But it conveys that loss in one of
the most heartbreakingly poignant ways imaginable. I'm serious. The only thing
that's actually sadder from an objective viewpoint than this part of the song, is
Heartattack in a Layby. Even though The Start of Something Beautiful, Stop
Swimming, and Feel So Low, are a lot more emotionally impacting. They were
written for that, though. Anesthetize was meant to be an immersive epic that
encompasses a number of things that Fear of a Blank Planet wasn't going to be
large enough of an album to place into itself. The heartbreaker aspect was part of
that. And that's never been part of any of Steven's other epics, except arguably
Russia on Ice. Yet through Steven's vocals and Barbieri's piano, that's all going to
crash down on you in this part of the song.
Where was I? Ah, yes. The guy is standing on the beach. He's emotional, but he's
emotionless at the same time. There's an inner sense of emotion that's growing in
his mind as we hear this song, yet he's not going to display it. Because face it, he's
gone for so long in his life without showing any emotion. Now he has the ABILITY to
do it, but he doesn't have the capability of it. Yet through all that he's felt attraction

to someone. Finally, that person and he are standing in the same area. She,
however, is distant from him. He's well within his ability to talk to her, to try and get
with her, but he doesn't. She holds her hat in the breeze, enjoying the warm
summer air just as he does. However, they do nothing. She turns away from him,
and with that, the future that he could have built is destroyed. All because of the
anesthesia that's been plaguing him throughout his whole life, he's never been able
to convey what he really feels. And now, that's all gone from him, just like that.
He says "there's black across the sun". Now, I've heard people theorize that's a
reference to him beginning to wish for an apocalypse, and getting to thinking of the
song Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden. That's not very plausible, because it's totally
removed from anything Anesthetize is supposed to be about. Face it, we had all this
eerie buildup throughout the entire third part of the song. It featured the most
beautiful vocals that Steven has ever delivered. And just listen to them! They're still
beautiful. They're not layered as they were, but the way his voice comes together
with the acoustic guitar, keyboards, and drums is one of the most deliciously
melodic experiences that Porcupine Tree have ever put in their work. But it was all a
lead up to something that could only be bad. Something this beautiful can only
empty itself onto that. And here we are, with the narrator on the beach. Here, he
realizes that his life really has been ruined. The sun has been blackened. He's
literally crying out, because with this girl gone, there's nothing left for him. He
knows that there's nothing that can possibly happen between him and her, so he
just lets it go. Or maybe because he can't emotionally connect. Just maybe. Who
knows.
<I>Water so warm that day
I counted out the waves
As they broke into surf
I smiled into the sun</I>
Barbieri keeps going on piano, and then the drums bring it back to this chorus of
sorts. Except it's a bit more coherent this time around, I've always felt. I keep
hearing different things when I listen to this, mainly because it's layered in such a
way that it can be hard to understand at times. It probably is the exact same, but
I've just always gotten a different feel for it the second time through when I hear it. I
feel now is as good a time as any to describe for you guys once again how powerful
this is. Anesthetize took #1 for this reason, for what a devastating impact it makes
on you in the end. It probably would have made the top ten if it only consisted of
the first two sections, but they needed completion. And in this part of the song is a
thematic connection that runs throughout the entire album. It's probably a happier
ending than, let's say, Sleep Together. But just listen. The third section is so tragic,
so woeful, and it hits me so hard, that it makes Anesthetize as a song, in and of
itself. To make a song like that is truly an accomplishment.
I've come quite close to shedding tears to it. Mainly because as I've said before, it's

the best of every element of Porcupine Tree's music, coming together. In terms of
Steven Wilson-ism, as I call it, this section does that all brilliantly. Layered vocals?
Steven is one of the only musicians who does that anymore since the Beatles. It's
his paranoia, his rhetorically impacting lyrics, his wit, his fear... all of that is
compounded here. As a person, I get lost in my music at times, and release myself
to dream within it. Anesthetize's third section takes me away from all walks of
reality. Is that crazy? That a mere four minutes of a song that's eighteen minutes
long, is that powerful in the context of its entire scheme? It's the imagery. I
<B>see</B> the person standing on the beach. He's me. He's all of us. He's all of
the people who have gone through their lives as mindless zombies. He's every
aspect of us that's gone to waste. Maybe it's an unfortunate circumstance. You
always get the impression that the guy in this song isn't in control of everything.
He's been anesthetized, so to speak. But that finally ends, after that long coma.
Then, when he emerges, the world as he sees it is completely different, and the
third section is that sense of complete ruin. The girl turning away from him
represents that thing, long ago, in which he had hoped to do and become. To be
with her, I guess, because there was an affection there. But now it's been stripped
away from him along with all other reason for existence. That's why he feels a
blackening across the sun. It's one of those other things in the song that has its own
gravity compared to everything else. We know about being a mindless drone in the
world. Whether we're docile or in action, that's what the first two sections try to get
at, in a nutshell. We've all experienced it, and I suppose that's something we can
relate to. For the purpose of the song, it's overblown because of the whole
anesthesia concept. It's the third section that actually gives the message, though.
It's the side effect of all of that, and the way it puts it into such a rhetorical light just
brings me to where I am now. A man full of regret, and who's had a fair share of
despair in his lifetime. If I think about the third section for too long, I crack. It's too
much. There's nothing as emotional in Porcupine Tree's library except Heartattack in
a Layby. I identify with it beyond any form of comprehension. There's no way I can
even express it, but I feel that part of the song was written for me.
But of course, one of the other reasons I consider Anesthetize to be such a
masterpiece, is because the whole thing isn't just a Steven Wilson song. I consider
Heartattack in a Layby to be the very pinnacle of why Steven speaks to me as a
songwriter. Not that the rest of the band doesn't have any other role to play in it,
because they absolutely do, but Steven Wilson is the force that makes that song
click. If we're still on the topic of the third section, Barbieri contributes so much. Oh
my god, so much. He does nearly as much as Steven in that whole part of the song.
But apart from that, Barbieri contributes everywhere. So does Colin. Anesthetize is
also Gavin's shining moment. Plus, live, Wesley steals the show. There's not been a
better group performance yet in their entire library. Obviously, that's not the most
important thing in the world to me. Porcupine Tree is an amazing technical band,
but their technicality isn't the only reason that I listen to them. I listen to them
because Steven's my favorite songwriter, but I feel the group effort is extremely
formidable, and I give Anesthetize props for that.

So, that is Anesthetize. It all comes to a close as Steven echoes out "into the sun..."
one final time, then Barbieri brings it all to an end with a sweeping final piano
movement. It lasts only about half a minute, but you almost envision it as a movie
ending now. The guy with his head down in despair, as the sun finally sets in the
sky, and he's just left alone to stare out into the waves. Then the song is done.
There you go, that's Anesthetize. Whether it hit you or not isn't something I can
guess. There's different songs that do different things for people, and Anesthetize
isn't everyone's cup of tea. What I will say, however, is a final word about Fear of a
Blank Planet. It might not be my favorite album of theirs, but it's an extremely
impressive effort for 2007, and Porcupine Tree will hopefully only keep making
music this amazing. But yeah, Anesthetize's third section gives perhaps a sense of
continuity. Is the guy in the song only going to go downhill again? He's absolutely
devastated, even if he recovered from anesthesia. I never thought of Anesthetize as
a midpoint between My Ashes and Sentimental, but once again, not my call. But
yeah, that's essentially what it is. The centerpiece of the album. And because of its
third section it's the most powerful song of the whole ordeal by far. Steven gives
one message through the song, though: that's to avoid living your life like this. Live
your life as it must be lived, to the fullest. Otherwise, you will be destroyed forever.
Let the third section depict that to you.

I suppose that's my final message. Let me give one final shoutout to rand0mnez,
however. You, sir, have convinced me that people actually do read my writeups, as
you found a Rush reference in my twelve post Arriving writeup, that was a mere two
words in paragraphs upon paragraphs of text. I hope you're not too disappointed
that Dark Matter was at #5, and I get the impression that once we hit the top ten,
the song you would have most liked to take the gold besides that one, took it.
Maybe we like it for different reasons, but we still share a love for Anesthetize. So, I
don't know exactly how long this is going to be, since I don't predict writeup size
beforehand, but in any case, I'm still gonna keep following that Rush list. Make the
#1 writeup greater than this one. Larger, more amazing, more heartfelt... surpass
me. That's to everyone as well, since this will be my last list on this board for at
least three months, or perhaps ever. I'll stay on the board of course, but it may be
my last list. Farewell, all.