Composer/Musician Reacts to Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused To Sing (REACTION!!!)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Bryan reacts to and talks about his thoughts on Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused To Sing
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So it made some people uncomfortable.... that’s good, it’s supposed to. It’s about loss......2nd only to ‘Routine’ from ‘Hand cannot erase’ in provoking a disturbing emotional response.
Ancestral*
You need to listen first to Home Invasion/Regret #9 or Luminol. It's basically all the things that has Wilson in one song. This one I think is more specific when you KNOW Steven and you listened the whole album. Give it a try to those songs, you won't regret it believe me!
Do "Routine" by Steven Wilson, Great song😃
There's an unofficial video for the wilson song refuge, it is very special, cuts me up everytime 😢
This is one of the best channels at the moment .. all the subs have so many great recommendations..some stuff I have never heard before .
I actually didn't love this song the first time I heard it either. Now I kinda do.
I agree totally with you, SW is very highly regarded but I always find there is something missing, the ingredients are all there but the sum total never seems to get through to me
Belakor - Countless Skies heavy progressive shit
I'm sure this has been asked/answered, but what is the music in the closing credits of the video? It seems familiar, but I can't put my finger on it...
i love watch maker
Who cares about "reverse chord structures". General People listen to a song because of how it makes them feel. They dont care its a repetitive set of chords who also appear to be reversed in order.. You almost have to be some kind of snob for that..
But no hard feelings, dude. I've watched more of your videos and some of them are pretty good imo. Some even somewhat educational in ways i did not expect, cheers👍!
Some of us do care. As a musician, I always love to know why something makes me feel the way it does. Insight into the composers technique provides clues for understanding. That, for me at least, is another layer of enjoyment I can get from a piece. And Bryan is a composer after all so for us music nerds it's cool to hear his breakdown.
Not everyone cares to think of it that way. That's cool too. 😀
I love this song but I don't think it's worth analyzing at all. Try "Ancestral" from his solo works.
I appreciate Steven Wilson as a composer and producer, he has been involved with artists I love(like Opeth).
However I don't like his voice, and that ruins it for me, at least on his own stuff.
I like his voice only at certain times lol.
I agree that his voice isn't amazing, but it fits pretty perfectly with Porcupine Tree in my opinion. But yea, his solo stuff ain't for me, either.
Oh, This is a cool album though, I listened to it a month ago.
I agree his voice is the weakest point of his music.
If you review 'Drive Home' or 'Routine", don't forget the Kleenex.
drive home should be next, anything by Steven Wilson is great
that guthrie solo tho
That solo is definitely up there with comfortably numb & tornado of souls imo. Fantastic.
Man, you really should have done Luminol!
Both songs are from his third solo album. As for many of his previous works, this one is a concept album. He made a record that is very inspired by 70s prog rock (after working on remixes for many monumental albums by Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and others), and went with the concept of ghost stories, trying to portray that unsettling feeling both on musical tension and the lyrics as well. This song is probably the least technically interesting from the record, but it certainly is very harmonic, emotional and beautiful.
Haha I'm the one who requested Luminol and I feel very validated right now
I also said Luminol at some point!!, this song isn't really something Bryan would usually review.
That is one of my favorite songs right now! I hope he checks it out soon.
Yep, that song doesn't get enough love.
Oh Jesus, this song is gorgeous but always leaves me pretty emotionally shattered lol.
Dude, you need to check this out!
Karnivool 🤣
Specifically New Day, Goliath or Deadman*
Sky Machine!!!
This. New Day is definitely my favorite, but COTE and All I Know are also extremely powerful songs.
ohhh man i just saw the title of your video and went "Should have done luminol!" But this song is beautiful.
I think you would have LOVED luminol
watching this entire video now :D
Man, Routine would be so awesome... really, it would be AMAZING
just saying
I think, also, the song functions well as the album closer, it's a way of discharging all the energy and emotion from the prior tracks and leaving you in a satisfied, almost exalted state..For people who dig the style, Wilson is a master of these melancholic downtempo burners with songs like Stop Swimming, Collapse The Light Into Earth, and Glass Arm Shattering.
Glass Arm Shattering Opeth - "Damnation" album.
This is such a beautiful song with so much emotion. It always makes me cry. Please more Steven Wilson.
Not a big Steven Wilson guy but I have listened to this album, and this is one of the less interesting tracks on it if you listen to them individually. It's the final track on the album and to my ears it's intended to serve as an atmospheric epilogue, and it does it's job in that regard. I think the opener (Luminol) would have been the better track to react to.
Absolutely. Not the best song stand alone but amazing as a finish to the album and also live gigs where it grows so much bigger.
Dude, you need to check this out:
Car Bomb (Secrets within Secrets, probably)
Spirit of Poison.
This part where he just goes "don't contradict yourself" is just soooooooooo fecking good :D
Masterpiece'song from a masterpiece's album. Try Luminol.
Steven Wilson - Home Invasion/Regret #9
Also I 2nd Karnivool. Their songs 'Deadman' or 'Goliath'. The whole 'Sound Awake' album from them is fantastic.
What a piece man, part of this song actually gave me chills, like when the shadow figure was reaching out at the old man. This also reminded me a lot of Wilderun, some of the chord progressions in the middle lined up with that band.
You need to check out this.
Sigur ros - Ara Batur at Abbey Rd.
Thanks for all the reactions 👍
Drive home should be next!
This song works for me, but I can see how it wouldn’t land for everyone. I think Steven Wilson’s greatest strengths are setting up dark, melancholy, or reflective moods, and also writing beautiful melodies with sad or sarcastic lyrics.
A heavy-leaning example of the first is Porcupine Tree’s “Sleep Together” - dark and a little unnerving but a great groove. th-cam.com/video/kpw7cBBrSA4/w-d-xo.html
For the beautiful melody angle, check out Lazarus. Not sarcastic, but melancholy. th-cam.com/video/N1Nsk1tPiAQ/w-d-xo.html
I think his fans love the beauty of his sound rather than melody. To me, it's rather the opposite - too clean, too sweet - not for me.
I agree this song is basically wedded to the video. Drive home is the same. I would recommend Luminol. Even the live version would be great.
I think the live version of The Watchmaker might be my favorite of the album. The guitar and sax duet is just killer.
Man Steven creates the saddest most depressing shit ever..... and goddamn I fucking love it 😎 his compositions are just beyond words. Don’t expect to hear many standard song structures in his music.
I know this channel is more than likely dedicated to the intricacies of the music itself, and I don’t aim to detract from that. However, wow I haven’t heard this song in a few years and I forgot how much it absolutely destroys me. Steven’s music has always had a way of getting to me like that.
The album (that this song is on) as a whole was definitely a grower for me. On my first listen I really didn't get it. Today, it's one of my most treasured albums, if not the most treasured. I agree with a lot of comments here though, that Luminol might have been a better introduction.
some Opeth , Swans or Belakor please !
This is the kind of album I listen to once, appreciate it, and then never feel the need to listen to it again. It has amazing composition and the soundscape it creates is awe inspiring, but I just don't like the feelings I get when I listen to it.
Oh my God! I've been waiting for this and I didn't even know.
"Ancestral" would be nicer than this.
Guys Raven is great choice and live just so emotionally overwhelming... in the comments section it would be nice for once to read comments about the chosen song and not „yeah mhm right .. but take Luminol/Regrets/...“
Slugdge- salt thrower
Be'lakor- meither shape nor shadow
Gojira- space time
Arcania- the face in the mirror
I agree, gotta only listen to the track without any video , this track is okay but there's just not enough going on for me with this one. & I do enjoy simple songs, just something about this one didn't quite stick ,
nice analysis as usual
I really like a lot of the stuff from Steven Wilson's newest solo album like To the Bone, The Same Asylum as Before and Pariah.
Hmm. I really like Porcupine Tree and some of the other Steven Wilson stuff I've heard. I'm not sure if it's because I was already pretty depressed today but I really did not feel this one at all.
Ancestral!!!
For me this song it's the emotion that creates more than the variety or changes. And the emotion it's in the music and in the videoclip working together.
You should react to ancestral live royal albert hall
I love this song for how emotional it is. It's certainly not the most complex or musically intricate song Wilson has done, but it serves as a perfect tonal closing/epilogue to the album. One of my favorite "tones" in music is what I call bittersweetness, and it's typically done by placing beautiful melodies or progressions over minor keys, or building tension with minor keys and having them temporarily resolve, or even just using major keys but leaning heavily on the minor chords within that key. That's all over this song. It just builds and builds a haunting tension early on, but there are these moments of sweetness punctuating the melancholy: the violin at 3:47 that returns to resolve at 5:22. I also love that orchestral swell at 4:57 on the word "please, sing, cry." It SOUNDS like a musical outcry, and the fact that it precedes that violin resolution after is just perfect. I also love the entire climax of the song, which still leans on that ambiguity between the sadness and the sweetness, and that gentle piano outro is just the cherry on top.
I think this track is a perfect example of what I call tonally complex music (tone as in emotional tone, not musical tonality). So much music is very clear about what emotion it's trying to express, it's either just sad, or just happy, or just dramatic, or whatever. Songs like this seem to live, move, and shift around in that grey area where you get hints of multiple tonal qualities that mix together. There's something about that that seems more true to most human experience. I'd definitely recommend more listens, especially if you can hear it in the context of the album. You're right that Wilson is a quite varied songwriter and this just the tip of the iceberg. Other commenters have suggested Luminol, and it's a great track too and you might like that better.
Thanks for putting together the words that expresse what I'm feeling about this song.
Seeing this song live as a way to close a show is one of my most memorable concert experience ever.
@@alexandremarchand8815 You're welcome!
SW is becoming more and more uninteresting to me and that slowly began with the album "The Raven That Refused To Sing".. I loved the predecessor "Grace For Drowning" though.
was hoping for Luminol
This whole album is genius! Another good one is his album with Opeth singer/songwriter Mikael Akerfeldt, it is called Storm Corrosion
YES. Storm corrosion is a very underappreciated collab between a couple of my favorite artists.
Bryan, it sounds like what you would have liked is a bridge to take the piece into a developmental place that would set up a satisfying finale when it returns to the main thematic changes. Fair enough. I think the development is all in the build from the simple voice and piano, going into the orchestral accompaniment, then into the heavier treatment with percussion and guitar, and the interestingly triumphant ending. Plus, this is an album of "ghost stories", so the narrative as portrayed in the video is the arc with the music as the soundtrack. SW is a frustrated soundtrack composer, and so this piece was an attempt at that kind of writing.
Hi, please react to "A Thousand shards of heaven" by Lunatic soul.
Wilson has commented that he composes in a "cinematic" way. He creates the songs with a filmic structure and development. If we add to that that in bad times he composed songs for publicity to survive, chances are that, as you correctly assume, the main themes are composed with the video in mind. You are the first person I hear raise the possibility (sorry for my English)
As much as I love this song, it's the closer for the album of the same name and isn't a good representation for how crazy prog the rest of the album is. This is the most laid back track.
Agreed. I don't know if it's a prog fan thing, but I've noticed a tendency for people to recommend songs that they like rather than songs that are representative of or a good introduction to a band's sound.
@@ScarsUnseen this is just a great song that usually prompts an emotional response. That is why it is often picked. It doesnt have to represent the album.
@@Bellathor Does it have to? Obviously not. Should it? Well when you are recommending to people who tend not to react to more than one song by a band, I'd say yeah, it probably should.
You should listen to Von Hertzen Brothers! Bring out the Sun (+ Spanish 411) or The War is over, both are good! :)
I’m not a fan of Wilson’s voice. Cool melody though
Drive. Home.
.
Could you please react to Steven Wilson’s song “routine”?
I'm familiar enough with Steven Wilson to know I don't want to put myself through the wringer again.
Dude, oh dude, you gotta check out some Agent Fresco. "Stillness" is a great song to start with.
I'd be very interested if you check out Luminol
Drive homeeeee,You must watch the animated video
Musically the chord sequence early switches between a minor and major ending.
Ab Am Bb Cm | Ab Am Bb C. And even in the progression you've got the e-flat e-natural f line happening.
Then later on you have the VIIb - IV - vi - VIIb theme coming in ('sing to me raven' etc.)
After that it (nearly?) always resolves to the major chord and that restlessness is resolved.
The whole album this is from is about ghost stories - hence the creepiness but it shares a similar theme to Drive Home (which is a better song imo) - someone finding peace after a traumatic past.
I think this one is a bit of a grower but I don't think it's his best. It does rely a lot on the production to reuse the same material over and over while feeling like it goes somewhere.
I'd have gone for Drive Home, Routine or the Regret #9 options. But I do entirely appreciate where you're coming from.
oh and it just occurred to me that the 'sing to me raven tune' also hangs unresolved til the end.
e-f-g-c-g-f-e-f-g-d - that last d wants to resolve down to the c but is left hanging, possibly until that very last piano line at the end.
(Possibly that fast flute part sometimes played over the C chords is a sped up variation on that theme too, now I think about it)
Thanks so much for this info. I don't have perfect pitch and really sheet music in front of me to know the specifics of what's going on and your breakdown perfectly substitutes for the sheet music.
@@CriticalReactions you always have a very good sense for the music and take a lot in from just one listen. I only know most of the above from playing along on a piano at some point.
I think its inevitable that he checks out tallah no one should read this
Holy Drinker is my favorite song by him
Routine is the greatest masterpiece
Should really listen to The Raven album in full. But on a different note, how come you didn't listen to Wilson on your own?
Hadn't heard of him until recently. I'm basically a decade behind in the music world, sadly.
@@CriticalReactions Haha, no worries. There's a lot of music around. But this song is not an indicator, though it is great. It is really better in the context of album, you won't be disappointed.
Steven Wilson is GOD
SETH ANGERER-KYNIKOS. Hopefully I'm early enough for you to see this. He's a single Austrian guy who writes what calls "epic progressive metal". He lists his influences as Meshuggah, Haken and Hans Zimmer. It's extremely well composed even with his symphonies and it's a damn shame that he's so unknown. Please don't sleep on him!
thanks bro will check it
I'll see what I can do about getting him on the channel.
ha that was interesting for sure, don't wanna say much more so I don't spoil it for Mr. Bryan
@@CriticalReactions thanks man. I found him last year and bought all of his discography immediately. And like everyone here I just want to show other people music they might enjoy, especially if that band/person is so obscure they might not have found them otherwise. Also; thanks for covering bands in general that aren't usually on the tips of people tongues. You do a really good job at covering great bands that fly under other people's radar.
@@deminybs I know EXACTLY what you're talking about lol.
Steven Wilson - Refuge
Similar to this mood, but far way better (my respects on Steven Wilson) I strongly suggest the last masterpiece of Crippled Black Phoenix called The Invisible Past, trully epic song and a great example of how vocals can whidstand 11 minutes of building-up just by adding variations and intensity. Worth mentioning that this track almost closes one of the best post-rock albums of 2020.
NOT the best choice from Stevens solo stuff. Ancestral, The Watchmaker, Routine, Pariah, People who eat darkness, Personal Shopper. It seems people here choose the more obscure songs.
TH-cam recommendation, glad it finally recommended a video a
worth watching!
So many different flavors & styles when it comes to Steven Wilson & all his projects, old & new... But for the sake of choosing "one" - Home Invasion/Regret #9 would be my vote for the next reaction.
Think major minor
Right, constant tension, like the tension you feel when you feel your regret and loss-filled life coming to an end. This song is unlike anything else.
As the person who requested Luminol on Patreon, I feel validated by this comment section haha. But either way I'm glad Steven Wilson made it on here from that huge list of bands, he's a very unique and talented musician.
I know this is a favourit song for alot of fans (and Steven himself) but I just don't care for this song. Maybe it's because of the unresolved tension that just makes it annoying and it doesn't feel emotional to me.
I've been waiting for this
You should definitely check out Satyr - Picayune
He closed out his 2018 tour sets with this song, with this Jess Cope video playing in the background
I'd not seen him live before, I'd only heard the studio version of this - This one definitely left the whole auditorium feeling emotionally cold, and it was very clear that a few people around me in particular needed to snap back to reality and remember where they were when the song finished to give their final applause
That's a really anecdote. Live performances tend to have a heightened emotion and energy to them so I could easily imagine this hitting harder in person.
Bent Knee - Bone Rage (Live at Big Nice Studio)
Getting some thom yorke vibes with this one
This animation style looks like the style on the new Opeth album's video clips.
Jess Cope is the animator of this and many other of Wilsons videos. She also did Drag Ropes by Storm Corrosion and Ingen Sanning är Allas/Universial Truth by Opeth.
I heard you mention The Used in a previous video. I've been jamming The Lottery and Blow me by them, you should definitely check those two out. It's a good throwback to their heyday
Their first 4 albums are phenomenal but I started loosing interest in them when whatever album had El-Oh-Vee-Ee on it came out. Then Quinn was kicked out / left and Canyon didn't land for me. I haven't even given Heartwork a listen because of their recent works. I take it I should fix that?
@@CriticalReactions there are a lot of hit or miss songs, for sure. But the two I mentioned are awesome and I've been jamming to them both lately.
So I loved this. And to me, this is a prime example of a song where the music isn't and shouldn't be forefront. I think this is a lyrically driven song and as a whole I thought it was brilliant, and extremely sad. Great overall, for me anyways.
I strongly agree with you :)
I have no musical training, beyond my primary school report saying, "gets extremely animated by music". So, in my naive way, it felt like a long way of getting nowhere. The vocals, too, I found nasally.