THE PINEAPPLE THIEF

Versions Of The Truth

An enveloping, cinematic soundtrack for the post-truth age.

Besides writing 13 Pineapple Thief albums, one Wisdom Of Crowds and two solo records in 20 years, Bruce Soord has mixed, engineered and produced his way into contemporary prog history. As a multi-channel mixer his credentials are especially strong – his CV features work with Anathema, Katatonia, Tim Bowness, Opeth and others. Why mention this? Because that experience audibly feeds into his band’s cinematic 13th album. Great engineers don’t always

A MEDITATION ON THE CONFLICTS OF 21ST CENTURY LIVING.

make great musicians, but Soord goes some way to showing the kind of nuanced, accessible progressive music that those combined instincts can achieve.

Picking up from 2018’s Dissolution, Versions Of The Truth is swan-like in its apparent sense of purity, beneath which dark legs and a great deal of movement do the driving. The clarity and innocence of Soord’s voice is tempered with melancholy and experience. Spiced up by some crisp, clever work from drummer extraordinaire Gavin Harrison, it leads a masterfully executed mesh of sounds, moods and meditations on the conflicts of 21st-century living.

To describe Harrison as perfect for TPT because of his Porcupine Tree and King Crimson history would be an oversimplification. His role in embellishing Soord’s songs lies in his ability to create colour with rhythm. His considered lightness of touch brings space and suspense at timely moments throughout the record – not least the expansive, commanding title track. Proof, if you needed it, that drums can be about so much more than keeping a beat.

At the rockiest end there’s Break It All, a low-resonating, Porcupine Tree-esque mix of moody guitar chops, interesting drum fills and electronics. Similarly, Leave Me Be comes with a big chorus guitar hook that sings out above the song’s menacing underbelly, while the single Demons (a commanding look at the ‘demons’ acquired with age) is punctuated by eastern, Zeppelin-esque six-string flourishes.

Elsewhere Our Mire peers into the aftermath of a broken relationship, its calm surface giving way to heavier, jagged edges. Out Of Line reflects on missed opportunities, its internal monologue quality acquiring emotional heft through gorgeous, sparingly deployed lead guitar.

Yet for all its dark textures and forlorn, often angered sentiments Versions Of The Truth is emphatically not a downbeat record. There are no 10-minute-plus epics (the longest track is just shy of seven and a half) but this isn’t ‘stripped-back’ music. Nor is it as condensed as 2014’s Magnolia. The devil, rather, is in the detail, and at this point Soord and co do detail extremely well.