"The results rock with dynamic, dramatic vigour": The Pineapple Thief turn to concise structures on It Leads To This

Prog-leaning art rockers The Pineapple Thief self-edit in style on punchy 15th album It Leads To This

The Pineapple Thief: It Leads To This cover art
(Image: © KScope)

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While they’re often considered card-carrying members of the UK prog fraternity, The Pineapple Thief have always cherry-picked styles from that genre while also drawing on grunge (particularly in their early, turn-of-the-millennium output), metal, electronica and Radiohead-esque angst rock. 

Their penchant for a multi-segmented meander through a 20-minute song cycle has been a recurringly noticeable feature up until now, though, and the recruitment of King Crimson and Porcupine Tree percussion virtuoso Gavin Harrison has seemed to boost their creative juices in recent years.

It Leads To This is a pronounced turn towards more tightly constructed, concise songs – said to be the result of mainman Bruce Soord and Harrison writing together in the same room.

The results rock with dynamic, dramatic vigour on Put It Right and Rubicon, while Soord’s ability to tug melodically at heart strings remains in emotive evidence when the storm clouds part on Now It’s Yours and To Forget.

Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock

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