“How many of you came here by mistake tonight?  Wives, girlfriends, best friends, and so on?  I know what you’re thinking — ‘we’ve been here ninety minutes and he’s played four [expletive deleted] songs!’”

— Steven Wilson, September 19, 2025

To which the mostly – though not exclusively – male fans who brought those wives, girlfriends, best friends and so on to The Fillmore Detroit (btw, thanks for renaming the venerable State Theater so it’s just another franchise, Live Nation) would probably reply: “Yeah, but how about those four songs?!?”

As usual on this tour, Steven Wilson and his band kicked off with the entirety of his new concept album, The Overview, with hi-rez video projections and surround audio to match. While my critique of Wilson’s latest music holds — I found it compositionally thin, too derivative of his influences, annoyingly reductive in its materialist message — the scope of the visuals fused with the propulsion of Nick Beggs on basses and Craig Blundell on drums supplied the depth and drive my at-home listening has lacked. And when Randy McStine launched into a scorching guitar lament on “Objects Outlive Us: The Heat Death of the Universe”, or when Adam Holzman and his synthesizer skittered across galaxies on “The Overview: Infinity Measured in Moments” — well, the Chestertonian sense of wonder I’d been longing for was there in the moment, embodied if unprofessed.

Confirming Wilson’s current fascination with the creative template of vintage electronic music, he and Holzman opened the second set with a creepy synth duet on The Future Bites’ “King Ghost”. But then came the moment the numerous folks in Rush t-shirts had been awaiting – an no-holds-barred take on “Home Invasion/Regret #9” from 2015’s neo-prog masterwork Hand.Cannot.Erase. Everything veteran cosmic rockers love about this album was there: blazing guitar riffs, biting Rhodes chords from Holzman, earthy funk grooves from Beggs and Blundell, solo space aplenty for Holzman and McStine, and lyrics spat out by Wilson, as on target in their bleak portrait of online life as they were a decade ago:

Download sex and download God
Download the funds to meet the cost
Download a dream home and a wife
Download the ocean and the sky

Download love and download war
Download the shit you didn’t want
Download the things that make you mad
Download the life you wish you had

Another day of life has passed me by
But I have lost all faith in what’s outside
The awning of the stars across the sky
And the wreckage of the night

From that point, Wilson and the band didn’t miss a trick; as they trawled his back catalog, the crowd stayed with them through every twist and turn. And admittedly, there was something for everyone in this setlist: the soft pop of “What Life Brings” (which, Wilson pointed out, never got traction on TikTok due to its minute-long guitar solo); Beggs’ jaw-dropping Stick feature on The Harmony Codex closer “Staircase”; a take on the vintage Porcupine Tree tarantella “Dislocated Day”, stretched out by Wilson bringing Blundell’s volume lower . . . and lower . . . and lower; “Pariah”, To The Bone’s vocal duet that proved effective even with a prerecorded Ninet Tayib; extended cinematic workout “Impossible Tightrope”; the metal-injected melancholy of “Harmony Korine”; and brutal, thrashy set-closer “Vermillioncore”. As encores, the multi-part epic “Ancestral” and the mournfully uplifting title track of The Raven That Refused To Sing put a satisfying button on the night.

If Steven Wilson remains unapologetic about his consistently contrarian musical moves, his current live concerts embrace a certain realism; repeated stabs at channeling modern pop toward progressive ends (especially on The Future Bites) didn’t necessarily expand his core audience, while the recent Porcupine Tree reunion seems to have brought younger generations of rock and metal fans into the fold. Projecting a new-found comfort with cult status (as he cracked after a labored joke about tariffs, “I’m not famous enough to be extradited”), Wilson and his killer band are delivering the virtuoso goods present and past on this tour, and the delighted Detroit crowd — a pleasant surprise for a grateful Wilson, given that it was his first solo stop there — ate it up. Whether you believe Wilson peaked ten years ago, hold on to hope that his best is yet to come, or even wind up at his concert by mistake, I think you’ll find something to your liking at this generous three-hour show. (Remaining US and world tour dates are here.)

— Rick Krueger