PORCUPINE TREE = PINKUPINE FLOYDTREE
Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 2:06pm by Vince NeilsteinAs I mentioned earlier, Kip and I went to see Porcupine Tree (and King’s X!) this past Thursday. Porcupine Tree was good, if not spectacular… they’re all great players, they write good songs, have an excellent sense of composition and are certainly quite accomplished; but at no point during the performance was I at all wowed.
Except when I realized that “Time Flies,” Movement IX from the first disc of the band’s new record The Incident, is a dead rip-off of Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” (from the Animals record, a personal favorite of mine). Now, Steven Wilson has certainly never been shy about his love of Floyd, and even if not for that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s heard Porcupine Tree’s music before that the band bows down in the alter of Floyd. But YO, this is like, too similar for comfort. Check it out:
Porcupine Tree – “Time Flies”:
Pink Floyd – “Dogs”:
I’m not crazy, right? The staccato-strummed acoustic guitar, the keyboard swells leading into each chord change, similar vocal melodies, the verse that starts “and after a while…”. The only real difference is that the P-Tree riff is in 3/4 instead of Floyd’s 4/4. Sorry Steven, you rule at producing Opeth and you’re a talented musician, but for this you get a big, fat, epic FAIL.
-VN
mine goes “duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh”, theirs goes “duh-duh-duh da-duh-duh”, its totally different. (see vanilla ice on under pressure)
no surprise really….it’s not the first time. there are some pretty straight floyd rips on Voyage 34 not to mention the whole Sky Moves Sideways album. i dont think it would stick out so much if it wasnt for the keys in the backgrounds…
…would like to have seen Ptree with Kings X…it always cracks me up when Doug Pinnick talks about smokin weed with his pentegram belt buckle on after singing some God song.
Holy regurgitated shit…you’re right.
kinda…sorta i guess
Hmm, the chords definitely are very similar. No complete overlap with any one riff though. To say Wilson didn’t take at least something from Dogs would be an outright lie. This shit happens all the time though. Search metal that sounds like other metal on Youtube.
Stephen Wilson probably thinks this is some sort of clever homage, which would be fine if any element of the song aside from the repurposed riffs was interesting.
really really really similar. pink floyd rules.
I think given the nature of the lyrics (particularly at the begining of the song) it seems to me like the tune is ‘tributing’ Pink Floyd. I mean, given he must have been around 10y/o when he first heard this song, it kinda makes sense.
Is anyone else sick of Porcupine Tree these days? Their new album sounds the same, but as Vince points out, just tries too hard to be all avant-garde and Floydian. Also, their sound is getting WAY too rehashed…I feel like they have been using the same exact drum sound, guitar sound, bass sound….you get the idea. It’s hard to say a Porcupine Tree album sucks, but that catchy sound they formulated back in 2002 with In Absentia is getting pretty old. Oh, also, Stephen Wilson has great vocal potential, but he needs to stop being a whiny bitch and sing with some balls.
Definitely not sick of them, but they haven’t topped “Deadwing” with anything that came after. That and “In Absentia” are by far their best work. I like the new one quite a bit, but it’s not as catchy… doesn’t really grab me the same way the aforementioned do.
Steven Wilson.
how was king’s x?
nevermind…i see the link. oops.
Extended version is better, The Incident is still awesome. I don’t think Porcupine Tree has done anything crap in my opinion.
So they sound alike. Happens all the time in music. I’m a fan of both bands so I can’t really complain. But, like it’s already been pointed out, PT has a lot of Floyd worship in their music so it’s not really surprising.
I think The Incident is an excellent album. I noticed the subtle experimentation with 7 string guitars and trip-hop beats on some sections of the album. Otherwise, like someone said, it’s not much different from their previous albums but it’s done so well that I can’t complain. It’s much better than Fear of a Black Planet, which I thought was a bit disappointing.
Agree 110%
Steve Wilson made it on purpose and spoke about it saying it was a homage to his youthdays. It’s a conscious decision.
The Incident is their best album since In Absentia. However, Wilson truly shines on Insurgentes.
Oh too close for comfort
I saw the show the next night and while I loved the Fear of a Blank Planet tour, this show was just kind of there.
Nevertheless I could watch Gavin Harrison play all day long, so that’s ok.
I like Porcupine Tree (a really large amount) much more than Pink Floyd (not very much at all), but this does seem like a pretty direct rip-off. Wilson’s kind of a douche so he probably thought of this as a nice homage. I’ve heard bigger rip-offs from bigger bands ripping off bands that deserve it more.
Opeth does the same thing all the time and people think it’s clever when Mikael admits to it, why is this any different?
Jesus H Christ – Steven Wilson has gone on record stating Time Flies is an open homage to Pink Floyd.
A fair few No Shit Sherlock moments here this week and no mistake.
heh, indeed.
PS: Porcupine Tree are superior to about 99% of the bands that have been featured in this blog.
http://www.dprp.net/specials/2009_porcupinetree/
Interview with Wilson. He states: “The reason Time Flies is different is because it’s supposed to be about me, my childhood, what formed me and also what formed me as a musician. The musical reference in it relate more to the music I grew up with. So you hear a very deliberate reference to Pink Floyd for example. The first album I ever bought was Animals. There’s a riff in there that’s very similar, just different enough to not get sued.”
big time similarities…. i was expecting to hear some dogs barking after the first crescendo… or how the staccato-strummed electric in the middle sounds just like the end of sheep… check it out or am i crazy too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq5qME0gnjc
Hm. I’m surprised there isn’t as much love for the incident as i thought there would be here. IMO its the best porcupine tree album to date.
I’m a huge PT fan, but this is treading the line between homage and shameless ripoff.
Damn, this ade me remember how much I love Pink Floyd. Time for The Wall.
Everything that Anathema has done after Alternative 4 sound like a blatant Pink Floyd rip-off to me. On their live DVD they even closed the gig playing Confortably Numb!! I think it is pretty lame for a band to play a cover as the concert`s big highlight
man… it eventually goes other places, but the start is pretty damn close….. so close that I wonder if it is a conscious reference, and we are just missing the random interview where he says that or something…?
Though ya know…. wouldn’t be the first pop/rock song to be heavily based on movement from a tonic chord to submediant chord…. like… every Iron Maiden song for example?
That’s pretty cool, really. Nothing I would call a rip-off. Steven Wilson is a massive prog-head and I can hear a lot of other bands within the PT sound.
Porcupine Tree didn’t knock me out right away either. Give them time and they’ll become quite addictive.
It’s not a ripoff, per se………. All music comes from somewhere I suppose.
This can all be brought back to the conversation DC started about ‘borrowing’ ideas.
Maybe that arrogant cocksmoke Wilson thought if HE did it, it would be alright.
Honestly I hadn’t heard of Porcupine Tree until Deadwing, and I haven’t yet been impressed. It seems that anything Steve Wilson can do, Mikael Akerfeldt can do better.
And oh yeah, DLR > Hagar…………………………………that’s right.
I hate Pink Floyd. I hate them passionately. I stage record burnings of that fucking band. Porcupine Tree, oddly, holds much more appeal to me. Now why in the hell is that?
Passionately hating a band, is code for you secretly love them.
There is a definite similarity in the chord progression, but as it has already been noted this isn’t anything new for PT. They’ve definitely had some very PT and Marillion like moments in the past so I wouldn’t expect it to stop now.
There is another song on the new album where Steve Wilson does a guitar solo so similar in style to Marillion’s Steven Rothery that I wanted to check the liner notes to see if he had a guest appearance on the record.
I thought the exact same thing when i heard the song!!!
I’m a huge fan of both. And whether its a ripoff or not, i love both songs pretty equally. Dogs is an all-time favorite, and Time Flies is a new PT favorite. Its still badass.
I’m actually surprised to read as many favorable opinions of PT here as I have. The new album is a great step in their ever-evolving style.
Porcupine Tree is continual proof that there is still good music to being created.
Fucking Porcupine Tree!
the P-Tree riff is also 4/4. it’s played it tuplets.
You are all idiots. Take a fucking music class.