Silly, moving and imaginative: Steven Wilson's The Overview reviewed

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Progressive rock never died. Whenever some grizzled punk soldier next appears on a BBC4 documentary relaying their version of that beloved old fairytale, the Sex Pistols’s Slaying of the Dinosaurs, it’s worth remembering that nothing of the sort occurred. The big beasts of the 1970s – Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes – thrived into the 1980s and beyond, albeit in somewhat sleeker form. In turn they begat the likes of Marillion, Ozric Tentacles, Dream Theater, Talk Talk, Muse, Radiohead and Lankum, all of whom had or have familial ties to prog.

Porcupine Tree, the project founded by Steven Wilson in the late 1980s, is a case in point. Doggedly unfashionable, Porcupine Tree rose almost without a trace, establishing a vast audience outside of the mainstream critical caucus. With the band largely on hiatus these days, Wilson has continued his paradoxical trajectory into a kind of anonymous stardom. Boasting both the name and face of a reliable chartered accountant, I imagine Wilson can still walk the streets unmolested by fame, yet he sells out arenas and has a large and loyal fanbase.

Wilson has historically been uneasy sailing solely under the flag of prog rock, tacking away into post-punk and trance when the label has felt too limiting. On his seventh solo album, however, he nails his colours firmly to the mast. The Overview is an astral-themed concept album so elaborately conceived it should come with a cover painting by Roger Dean.

Inspired by the ‘overview effect’, the cognitive shunt astronauts experience on viewing Planet Earth from far-flung galaxies, Wilson follows a spaceman as he circles high above our planet, looking down quizzically at the tiny blue and green dot.