Yesterday, I had the grand privilege of introducing the The American Conservative audience to the joys and delights of Big Big Train. This morning, I’ve had an equal blessing in introducing Steven Wilson to The Imaginative Conservative audience. It’s prog week in the Birzer house! Then again, when isn’t it prog week in the Birzer house?
For this one, I focused on Wilson’s previous album, HAND.CANNOT.ERASE and explored the Christian humanist elements within it.
A huge thanks not only to Winston Elliott and Steve Klugewicz, masterful editors of The Imaginative Conservative, but to Stephen Humphries as well. As some of you might very well know, there is no one in the world outside of Wilson himself who knows more about Wilson than Humphries does.
To read, please click here.
Progarchy 
“The Imaginative Conservative” Eh??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA,I never even KNEW such a thing EXISTED!?!? (Awesome Title though!!!) 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Indieun7! Ha. Yes, a great friend and I started it in 2010. As opposed to the idiot conservatives!
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL> Well………..assuming there IS such a thing (an actual IMAGINATIVE conservative) By far,I’d MUCH rather have one of THEM,as opposed to an “IDIOT” one!!! (which is what our ENTIRE CONGRESS is made up of it seems like!!!) Lol. 😉
LikeLike
I am at a total loss for why you think “Happy Returns” represents a “happy if somewhat reluctant and reticent return to real life.”
I feel I’m falling once again
But now there’s no one left to catch me
She dies at the end of the song without finishing the letter she’s writing to her brother…just like the real life Joyce Carol Vincent. It’s not a happy return to real life AT ALL.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks so much, David. I probably just misinterpreted it. I’ll go back and listen. Yours, BB
LikeLiked by 2 people
Either that, or as the deluxe album package implies, the UFOs come and take her. Really. Regardless of the actual conclusion of HCE’s narrative (and I would argue that Wilson deliberately left it open), SW’s fundamentally humane take on the life & death of Joyce Carol Vincent was my album of 2015.
LikeLike