Pure Reason Revolution Evolves While Calling Back to Signature Sound
"Coming Back to Consciousness" features more personal lyrics but the same PRR quality.
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection, and thank you for your patience. It’s become a bit cumbersome to continue the previous weekly pace of this newsletter (and the accompanying videos and podcasts). Other endeavors that require my attention are more lucrative and necessary for me to keep up with, so until I find myself able to shed one or two of those, MRC might struggle to maintain a regular publication schedule. As always, scheduling and availability are the big issues.
That said, there is another MRC coming next week that I’m as excited about as I am this one. For today’s edition, I recently had a conversation with Pure Reason Revolution founding member Jon Courtney about the band’s upcoming album, Coming Up to Consciousness.
Let’s jump right into that story.
Pure Reason Revolution burst onto the scene in 2006 with its debut album, The Dark Third. The band crossed genre boundaries with music that defied pigeonholing. There were Pink Floyd vibes, along with the challenging and complex arrangements of progressive rock. On the other hand, the music was filled with beautiful three-part harmonies borrowing from Fleetwood Mac, the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills & Nash. All of it was wrapped up in modern production with elements of electronic music as well, and the band built meticulous soundscapes with depth and texture.
After two more albums — Amor Vincit Omnia (2009) and Hammer and Anvil (2010), the band…stopped.
“We’d worked together a lot, and we'd all sort of grown with different interests, I think, within the band,” said Pure Reason Revolution founder and multi-instrumentalist Jon Courtney. “And it just felt time, and we had the feeling of ‘Why are we still doing this?’ Everyone was sort of pulling in different directions, so we thought, ‘Yeah, it's time to finish this for now.’ And then everyone went on to do different things musically.”
Following a period of working on industrial-oriented music, Courtney reformed Pure Reason Revolution with a slightly different lineup nearly a decade later and released new albums Eupnea and Above Cirrus in 2020 and 2022, respectively. The band is back in 2024 with its sixth studio release, Coming Up to Consciousness, which drops on Sept. 6 on Inside Out Music.
Exploring dark themes such as betrayal, deception, fear, grief, mortality, and questioning one’s sanity, it is Courtney’s most personal album from a lyrical standpoint. But there is hope and light amidst the darkness of the subject matter, and — as always — the band’s harmonies keep the proceedings uplifting enough to prevent it from becoming depressing.
“I'm very grateful that I can do this as a musician. I have this outlet that we can get it out in lyrics and music,” Courtney said of using music as a form of therapy. “Yeah, it's a really cathartic process for me to be able to do this. I hope that there's positivity and hope that comes out at the end of it.”
Courtney said a catalyst for the album’s subject matter came from dealing with the unexpectedly heavy grief he’d felt after having to have the beloved family dog put to sleep. There was also a serious scare when he learned he and his family may have been exposed to a deadly substance.
“Just as I was feeling better about (his dog’s death), you know, maybe let's say this is eight to 12 weeks (later), I had this possible exposure with asbestos,” he said. “And this was really my life’s biggest fear, and already with death and mortality in sharp focus, this was just right there. And, you know, I thought death was imminent, not just for me but for my family.”
Courtney sought professional help for his anxiety and learned he had also been suppressing obsessive compulsive disorder for years. Through therapy, he was able to get a handle on his emotional well being.
“Now, almost two years later, I can see this whole time as a great learning curve and a great time of growth,” he said. “At the time, it was painful as hell. But through music, I was able to get it out.”
As for the musical content on Coming Up to Consciousness, there are moments that seem linked directly back to the band’s music as far as The Dark Third. However, the band has eased up on doing so many harmonies and vocal tracks over the years to allow more character to shine through in the vocals. There are more solo vocals — both male and female — than on the earlier albums. The music still has plenty of depth and complexity as well as moments of both dreamy and poppy harmonies.
However, the female vocals this time out aren’t coming from longtime vocalist Chloe Alper, who had to step back a bit from Pure Reason Revolution in recent years due to her work with the well-known English alternative rock band James. Pure Reason Revolution recruited Annicke Shireen to do vocals at live shows due to Alper’s conflicting commitments with James after the release of the last PRR album. With more of the same on the horizon for Coming Up to Consciousness, it made sense to have Shireen sing on the album. But fans will need sharp ears to tell the difference, as the two women have similar tonalities to their voices.
Rounding out the band on the new album is Greg Jong (guitars, vocals) and Ravi Kesavaram (drums). The legendary Guy Pratt played bass on seven tracks on the album, with Jon Sykes from The Pineapple Thief adding bass parts as well. It became a whole The Pineapple Thief production, with Bruce Soord mixing the album and Steve Kitch mastering it.
I find the album overall to sound like a mixture of the brilliant harmony moments from The Dark Third dropped into a Steven Wilson solo album, and I mean that in the best possible way. Courtney’s vocals aren’t too dissimilar from those of the former Porcupine Tree front man. And as Wilson has incorporated plenty of female vocal bits in recent years with the help of Ninet Tayeb, there is some common ground.
My early favorites from the album were the first two pre-release singles, “Dig Till You Die” and “Useless Animal,” however, as usual, Pure Reason Revolution songs reveal more nuance and depth upon repeated listens, and now I’m geeking out over the final stretch of the album, featuring “Bend the Earth,” “Lifeless Creature,” and “As We Disappear.”
Courtney said the first thing he wrote for the album was “As We Disappear,” which turned out to be the closing track.
“That was originally called Rosengarten. It’s where we scattered the ashes of my dog,” said Courtney, a British ex-pat who lives in Berlin. “But it changed into ‘As We Disappear’ to tie in with the title of Jill's (Jill Tegan Doherty’s) artwork, which is the dog cover.”
“Dig Till You Die” is a song about working toward something your whole life and then not getting to enjoy it before passing on. It was inspired by a story he was told about a man who worked for many years so he could buy a ranch for retirement but passed away just three months after achieving his goal.
“It really taught me about living in the present, and doing the things I love,” Courtney said. “I'm not going to be on my deathbed thinking I wish I had written more riffs in the studio. I'm going to be thinking I wish I’d played more dinosaurs with my daughter in the garden. A precious thing.”
Because of Courtney’s affinity for Pink Floyd, I asked him if it was intentional that the title of “Dig Till You Die” is similar to the Floyd lyric about the rabbit digging the hole from “Breathe (in the Air)” on Dark Side of the Moon.
“I think subconsciously,” he said with a laugh. “No, I didn’t take it on purpose, but there’s always these ones with Floyd.”
Of the 14 tracks on the album, six are short, interstitial pieces that connect the “proper” songs on the record. The band has always liked making its albums be one continuous piece of music — a singular listening experience from start to finish.
My own subjective opinion is that Coming Up to Consciousness has a chance to finish high in my Pure Reason Revolution album rankings. There are plenty of moments that remind me of the debut album, and there are Floydy bits (mood, more than music), while it’s also seemingly influenced by more modern albums from Steven Wilson and The Pineapple Thief. The record continues to reveal new layers of depth and textures upon repeated listens, so I wouldn’t say I’ve fully absorbed it yet, even after more than a dozen listens.
I would say, however, that the album should appeal to Pure Reason Revolution’s longtime fanbase.
Tracklist:
(All song lengths taken from the promo tracks I was sent)
Prelude - Coming Up to Consciousness (0:32)
Dig Till You Die (4:36)
Interlude 1 (0:23)
Betrayal (4:05)
The Gallows (4:36)
Interlude 2 (0:21)
Useless Animal (3:56)
Interlude 3 (0:12)
Worship (5:02)
Interlude 4 (0:17)
Bend the Earth (6:19)
Lifeless Creature (6:10)
Interlude 5 (0:38)
As We Disappear (4:50)
For more information about Pure Reason Revolution, visit the band’s website at www.purereasonrevolutionofficial.com.
For my full conversation with Jon Courtney, check out the video below or download/stream Episode 135 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. In addition to the new album, Jon spoke about his musical beginnings and influences, some of the band’s changes over the years, and more.
Thanks again for your time. Please consider sharing this issue of the newsletter with the music lovers in your life via the first button below, or sharing Michael’s Record Collection (in general) with the second. And be sure to check out the podcast version of MRC at your favorite podcast dispensary. I invite you to visit my website at michaelsrecordcollection.com and to take a look at the membership levels on my Patreon site at patreon.com/michaelsrecordcollection to find out how you can support independent writing and podcasting for as little as $2 per month.
Note: Currently the subscriptions are turned off until I can get back to a regular publication schedule, so there’s never been a better time to join my Patreon!