Trains - Porcupine Tree

"Trains" is the opening track of In Absentia (2002), the album that pulled Porcupine Tree out of the cult-prog underground and into the wider rock conversation. It is the band at full power — Steven Wilson's gentlest melodic instincts wired straight to Gavin Harrison's first appearance behind the kit, with Richard Barbieri's atmospherics and Colin Edwin's bass doing the quiet load-bearing work in the background.

Why it lands at 5/5

The song is essentially three songs stitched into one without ever feeling like a medley. It opens on a fingerpicked acoustic figure that sounds almost like a folk lullaby, lifts into one of Wilson's most singable choruses, detonates into a heavy mid-section, and then — famously — collapses into a sparse hand-clap and banjo break before the final return. Every section earns the next.

Trivia & Deep Cuts

• In Absentia debut: This was the first Porcupine Tree album with Gavin Harrison on drums. He auditioned by playing on "Trains," and the song's odd-time fills are essentially his calling card.
• The hand claps: That iconic clapping breakdown was recorded by the whole band (and producer Paul Northfield) clustered around a single mic in the live room. Wilson has said it was meant to feel "communal," like the song collapsing into a campfire.
• The banjo: Yes, that's a real banjo. Wilson played it himself — he wanted a "rural" timbre to contrast with the heavy guitars, partly inspired by his obsession with mid-period King Crimson and partly by American folk records.
• Steven Wilson on the lyric: He's described "Trains" as being about nostalgia and the way a single recurring sound from childhood — in his case, the trains he could hear from his bedroom — can hold an entire emotional landscape.
• The album cover: The blurred-face photography on In Absentia was shot by Lasse Hoile, who became Porcupine Tree's long-term visual collaborator. The aesthetic was a deliberate break from the band's psychedelic-era artwork.
• Live staple: "Trains" has closed or near-closed almost every Porcupine Tree set since 2002, and it returned as a centerpiece of the 2022 Closure/Continuation reunion tour, twenty years later. Few prog songs survive that long without becoming a chore — this one only gets better.

A perfect opener, a perfect single, and a near-perfect argument for prog rock as an emotional form rather than a technical one.

Rating: 5/5