Stupid Dream is the fifth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. It was first released in March 1999, and then re-released on 15 May 2006 due to the band's rising popularity on major record label Lava Records with their releases of In Absentia in 2002 and Deadwing in 2005. The album, along with Lightbulb Sun in 2000, represented a transitional period for the band, moving away from the band's earlier work in instrumental and psychedelic music, but before they took a more metal direction in 2002 onwards. The album takes a commercially accessible pop rock sound while still retaining heavy progressive rock influences.
The album's title is a reference to frontman Steven Wilson's view of the music industry; while many aspire to be a musician for fame and glamorous lifestyle, he feels it's a "stupid dream" because it actually leads to a life of hard work and struggle.
Background
Origins
Frontman Steven Wilson explained the transitional period for the band at the time, stating:
Wilson said that the album marked a transition away from "abstract instrumentality" into more "natural songwriting" also due to the influence of the music he had been listening to since the release of their last album, Signify in 1996. Todd Rundgren, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Wilson stated that it was the first time that the band sat down and recorded a whole album in one extended period, rather than sporadically as with past albums. This enabled them to bring in an orchestra to record parts for the album. The band's next album, Lightbulb Sun, was recorded so closely after the Stupid Dream sessions that Wilson later reflected that they sounded like "two parts of a double record".
Other songs
"Even Less" was originally 17 minutes long, but Wilson decided to only use the first 7 minutes for the Stupid Dream album version.
The song "Stupid Dream" is actually only a short, 28 second instrumental piece of a tuning orchestra and sound effects. "Slave Called Shiver", and "Don't Hate Me", according to Wilson, are about feelings of "unreturned love". He said of them, "[A Slave Called Shiver]'s a very perverse love song, yeah. I mean, it's an unrequited love song. It's a love song with somebody who's obsessed with someone else, but none of that affection is returned. It relates very closely to 'Don't Hate Me', which is a song again about someone who's obsessed with someone from afar. 'Don't Hate Me' is an even more extreme version, because here this person actually begins to follow and make phone calls and, you know, it becomes very unhealthy. 'Slave Called Shiver' is slightly less extreme. It's about someone who's very much in love and obsessed with somebody else. That love is not returned and so there's a slightly violent perverse undercurrent. 'Pure Narcotic' also is very much the same subject". "Don't Hate Me" featured the first use of saxophone in the music of Porcupine Tree, courtesy of Theo Travis. During live performances, the flute and saxophone solos are replaced by Barbieri's keyboard and Wilson guitar solos respectively.
"This Is No Rehearsal" has been described as a mixture of "semi-acoustic segments with desperate vocals and heavy metal raves". Wilson said it "...was directly inspired by a tragic UK event a few years ago. A child was taken from a shopping mall while his mother was momentarily distracted and was later found dead and tortured near a railway track. The most disturbing thing about the story was that the two abductors/murderers turned out to be children themselves".
"Baby Dream in Cellophane" is a short psychedelic track. Colin Edwin does not appear in this track, Wilson plays the bass instead. Wilson has said of the song, "The baby in the song is basically singing the song: 'I am in my pram'. And it's quite a cynical song because he's basically saying that the boy's life is almost mapped out already as the child is born, it's already predetermined by society and the baby's kind of singing from the pram if you like, saying 'well, actually no, I'm not going to go down this path that's been laid out for me. I'm gonna break out.' It's almost like a very surreal teen rebellion song."
In "A Smart Kid" Wilson returns to a topic he has touched on before in "Radioactive Toy", a track from their first album, On the Sunday of Life.... The lyrics deal with a sole survivor after a possible apocalyptic war that gets picked up by an exploring spaceship.
"Tinto Brass" is the only song on the album credited to the whole band, not just Wilson, and was named after Italian director Tinto Brass. The track is an instrumental, with the exception of a spoken word part. Regarding that part of the song, Wilson said: "Oh, yes, it's spoken in Japanese! It's my girlfriend who's Japanese and she's got a film book. I tell you it's so difficult to find anything on Tinto Brass in England. He's completely unknown... And then my girlfriend... found this little biography: where he was born, the films he made. So she said, 'well, should I translate that for you?' (because I wanted it to be spoken in the track) and I said 'No, it's great' — I thought — 'I'll have it in Japanese'. So she just read it in Japanese. But it's just a list of his films and where he's from... It's nothing interesting".
The album is closed with the track "Stop Swimming". Wilson said of its meaning, "I found that when I was writing the music for this album a lot of the songs were about me and my relationship with the music industry and how I felt about where I was going in the music business and all that. Things like 'Stop Swimming'... maybe it's time to stop swimming... and this kind of whole impulse to just give up and go with the flow can be very strong sometimes. I mean I've never given into it. I never will."
Reception
Reception for the album has been generally positive. Billboard praised the album, saying it contained some of Wilson's best lyrics, and favorably compared the album to the work of the band Radiohead. AllMusic praised the songwriting and dynamics of the album, stating "Wilson as a songwriter and singer both sounds recharged and more ambitious, while the group collectively pours it on. The loud passages feel truly sky-smashing, the calmer ones perfectly close, and the overall sense of build and drama -- "A Smart Kid" is a fine example—spot-on." Classic Rock listed the album at No. 61 on its "100 Greatest Albums of the 90s."
In October 2011, it was awarded a gold certification from the Independent Music Companies Association (IMPALA), which indicated sales in excess of 75,000 copies throughout Europe.
Track listing
All songs written by Steven Wilson, except "Tinto Brass", which is credited to all four band members.
;2006 Re-release
The re-release was in the form as both a 2 disc CD/DVD-A set, and double vinyl LP. The double vinyl LP was only available through the band's official store, Burning Shed. The CD contains a new mix of the album by Wilson, and the DVD-A contains a 5.1 surround mix, the video for "Piano Lessons", and two bonus tracks, the full 14-minute version of "Even Less", and "Ambulance Chasing", both previously released on Recordings in 2001. The Korean edition of Stupid Dream included the "Piano Lessons" video as well.