Steven Wilson will release his eighth solo album The Overview via Fiction Records on March 14 – and it marks his long-awaited return to prog territory.
The follow-up to 2023’s The Harmony Codex, the 42-minute concept album features just two epic songs, the 23-minute Objects Outlive Us and the 18-and-a-half minute title track. It hinges around the idea of what Wilson calls “perspective”. It stems from a conversation the musician had with Alexander Milas, founder of the Space Rocks organisation, who introduced the musician to something called “The Overview Effect”.
“It’s a recognised phenomenon that astronauts get when they look out into space,” says Wilson in the upcoming issue of Prog, which is on sale on December 31. “A cognitive shift reportedly occurs in their mental perspective – the understanding, in a split second, of just how insignificant we are. The album all comes down to this idea of perspective, which is something we all could do with an injection of.”
According to Wilson, that idea provided the jumping-off point for the sound and structure of the album, which partly reframes the sound of Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and other prog titans in a modern context.
“The idea I had immediately suggested something more long-form and conceptual and, dare I say, more progressive,” says Wilson, who once said that he didn’t plan on making another prog album after 2013’s The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories). “To pre-empt questions about why I’ve gone back to a more progressive style, it’s because that’s what the theme suggested.”
While the two tracks that make up The Overview feel distinct, with Objects Outlive Us leaning into prog and The Overview itself more electronic, they form an overarching musical and lyrical narrative.
“Objects Outlive Us is more of a human story,” explains Wilson. “Basically these little soap operas and stories about what we’re doing to the planet, set against what’s going on on the other side of the universe. The Overview is more the story of space – about being lost in space, about being on the other side of the universe, about the sheer size of it all.”
The album features contributions from regular Wilson collaborators Craig Blundell (drums), Adam Holzman (keyboards) and Randy McStine (guitar). The singer’s wife, Rotem, contributes spoken word vocals to the title track, intoning the names of increasingly distant and large interstellar objects (“Virgo supercluster… Eridanus supervoid… Super cluster complex”). Objects Outlive Us also features a section titled Objects: Meanwhile, featuring lyrics written by former XTC frontman and longtime Wilson hero Andy Partridge.
“Andy is brilliant at observing smalltown England – he’s the very best, along with [The Kinks’] Ray Davies,” says Wilson. “And early on, I wanted a sequence where there would be a juxtaposition of these little everyday soap operas with black holes and nebulas exploding on the other side of the universe – the triviality of everyday life juxtaposed with these events we can barely get our heads around. And I immediately thought about Andy. So I rang him up and said, ‘I’ve got a challenge for you…’ And he did an amazing job.”
Wilson will kick off his first solo tour in eight years in Stockholm in Sweden on May 1, 2025, with the British leg starting in Birmingham on May 9 and taking in four nights at the London Palladium. He plans to play both parts of The Overview in full, as well as debuting songs from The Harmony Codex.
“I’m going to have quadrophonic sounds and all the visuals,” he says. “But there’ll be a very different aesthetic with the lighting and the staging. There’ll be no risers on stage this time. All the musicians are going to be on the same level.”
