Grace for Drowning
Grace for Drowning is the second solo studio album by Steven Wilson, producer, songwriter, and frontman of Porcupine Tree. It was released by Kscope on 26 September 2011 as a double album, and his first album after Porcupine Tree's dissolution in 2010. The album received a nomination at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Surround Sound Album.
Background
After the release of his first solo album, Insurgentes, Steven Wilson spent time on a number of his other projects. These include Porcupine Tree's album The Incident in 2009, Blackfield's third album Welcome to My DNA, on 28 March 2011, and an ongoing project with Mikael Åkerfeldt named Storm Corrosion. "Cut Ribbon" was a song written in 2001 for a collaboration with Åkerfeldt, but it didn't fit the style of what Wilson was doing at the time. Wilson eventually released the song on his SoundCloud account, having completed the recording during the Grace For Drowning sessions. However, among all these projects, in 2010, he announced that he had started working on his second solo album as well.In early June 2011, Wilson launched a minisite for the new album revealing the album's name and album art photographed by his longtime collaborator Lasse Hoile. Additionally, a free download of the track "Remainder the Black Dog" was also added. Sound and Vision magazine's website premiered the video of "Track One" on 10 August 2011. Not long after, Yahoo! Music debuted the music video for "Index". On 16 August, WNYC's website premiered a free download for the radio edit of "Like Dust I Have Cleared From My Eye". A video clip for "Remainder the Black Dog" was finally released on 31 August, through Guitar World magazine's website.
Upon completion of the album, Wilson said:
The special edition of the album was released on Blu-ray video disc with the music playing in 5.1 surround sound. There are accompanying visuals and videos for each track.
The track Raider II is based on the murders of the "BTK killer", Dennis Rader.
Critical reception
Reception for the album was generally favourable. Ben Bland of Stereoboard wrote positively of the album, stating "For a work so defiantly widescreen in its intentions as this, it is truly remarkable that there is nothing that could, or rather should, be accused of being filler or being over the top." William Ruhlmann from AllMusic gave a mixed review to the album and compared it to Wilson's other projects, Porcupine Tree and Bass Communion, saying "Grace for Drowning has a particular conception in terms of its emotional journey from sadness through anger to acceptance, but it is also just another in a lengthy discography of albums by Wilson under various names in relatively similar styles". Brice Ezell of PopMatters gave a very positive review to the album, scoring it 8 out of 10. He wrote that " may remain a divisive musical personality, but Grace for Drowning is such a fine listen that even the most adamantly opposed listener has to at least give him style points, both for the artistic presentation of the album and the music within".Personnel
Credits adapted from the official website;Managerial
- Andy Leff – Acme Music
- Alex Leeks – assistant
- Steven Wilson – production, mixing
- Pat Mastelotto – additional production, electronic drums on "No Part of Me" and "Index"
- Dave Stewart – string & choir arrangements
- Mat Collis – engineering
- Paschal Byrne – mastering
- Lasse Hoile – photography, film director
- Bettina Ejlersen – photography assistant
- Carl Glover – art director
- Ray Shulman – Blu-ray authoring
- Steven Wilson – vocals on all tracks except "Sectarian", "Raider Prelude" and "Belle de Jour"
- Dave Kerzner – sound design on "Raider II"
- Synergy Vocals – choir on "Postcard", "Raider Prelude" and "Raider II"
- Steven Wilson – vocals, keys, guitars, autoharp, bass guitar, percussion, piano, gong, glockenspiel, programming, harmonium
- Jordan Rudess – piano
- Theo Travis – saxophone, clarinet, flute
- Ben Castle – clarinet
- Nick Beggs – Chapman stick, bass guitar
- Tony Levin – bass guitar
- Nic France – drums
- Pat Mastelotto – acoustic and electronic drums
- Markus Reuter – U8 touch guitar
- Trey Gunn – warr guitar and bass guitar
- The London Session Orchestra – strings
- Steve Hackett – guitar
- Mike Outram – guitar
- Sand Snowman – guitar
- Deluxe Edition also contains:
- *120-page hardback book.
- *Blu-ray with 5.1 surround sound mix, high resolution stereo and additional demos.
- *Blu-ray also contains films for five tracks, photo galleries, handwritten notes and lyrics.