Porcupine Tree | Trains
Porcupine Tree's "Trains" - Steven Wilson's nostalgia-soaked meditation on childhood summers and slipping time that became prog rock's most unexpectedly emotional breakthrough track.
Story Behind “Trains”
The Sound of Memory, the Shape of Longing
A bedroom near a train station. A child lying awake, listening to the hiss and rumble of locomotives passing in the night. The rhythm becomes a heartbeat. The sound becomes a portal. Years later, Steven Wilson would sit down to write about that exact moment—not as reportage, but as archaeology. He was excavating the feeling of time collapsing, of summers that seemed infinite then gone in an instant.
“Trains” began as something Steven Wilson explained in interviews as “an evocation of childhood summers.” But listen to the song and you realize that’s underselling it. This isn’t nostalgia as comfort. It’s nostalgia as wound.
By 2002, when Porcupine Tree entered the recording studio for what would become In Absentia, Wilson had been writing obsessively. He’d amassed nearly thirty songs over two years. He was freshly fascinated by heavy metal—Meshuggah, Opeth, the Swedish extreme metal scene that nobody expected the prog guy to care about. He was producing Opeth’s Blackwater Park. He was moving toward something harder, darker, more aggressive.
But “Trains” represented the other side of that impulse. This was Wilson holding onto something vanishing. This was him refusing to fully let go of the softer, more acoustic version of Porcupine Tree that had defined their earlier albums. As he would later say, he was caught between detuning guitars and writing stripped-down material with barely any instrumentation at all.
“Trains” was that stripped-down impulse made perfect. It’s the first song on an album about abuse, darkness, and the fractures of the human soul—and it opens with a child’s train set, with cousins in bedrooms, with the innocent hiss of distant trains.
The Album Concept’s Sweetest Edge
Wilson explained “Trains” as being “an evocation of his memories of childhood summers,” and while it includes the lyric “you’re tying me up,” it shares thematic ground with the album’s darker songs about trauma and abuse. But here’s what’s remarkable: on In Absentia, “Trains” acts as the gateway. It’s the gentlest entry point into an album that will, by its midpoint, descend into explicit narratives of serial murder and broken families.
The album works conceptually like a descent. The early songs—”Blackest Eyes,” “Trains,” “The Sound of Muzak”—are lighter, sometimes vague in their connection to the broader concept. Then the album shifts. A brief interlude called “.3” acts as a hinge, and suddenly everything becomes darker, more explicit. Songs like “The Creator Has a Mastertape” and “Strip the Soul” deal directly with abuse and destruction.
“Trains” sits at the threshold. It’s Wilson’s way of saying: this used to be innocent. This used to be summers. This used to be a child listening to trains. By the end of the album, you understand that innocence gets scarred. It gets corroded. Something steals it.
“Trains” Recording and Production Details
Avatar Studios, New York, and the Birth of Neo-Progressive Metal
Recording sessions for In Absentia took place at Avatar Studios in New York and London, with veteran audio engineer Paul Northfield and string arranger Dave Gregory playing major roles, with the album mixed in Los Angeles in May by Tim Palmer. But “Trains” was already written before the new drummer, Gavin Harrison, was brought into the band in February 2002. The drum parts were programmed initially, as the album was all written before Harrison joined.
So what you’re hearing on “Trains” is Harrison’s interpretation of what Wilson had already composed—and it’s perfect. Harrison brought something heavier, more propulsive than the band’s previous drummer Chris Maitland. Yet on “Trains,” he exercises restraint. The drumming breathes. It never overwhelms. The production favors the songwriting.
Steven Wilson performed vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, piano, and keyboards; Richard Barbieri handled analog synthesizers, mellotron, Hammond organ, and keyboards; Colin Edwin played bass guitar. The string arrangement work—that crucial element that lifts “Trains” from bedroom composition to fully realized track—came through Dave Gregory’s orchestration and the band’s collaborative instincts.
The Banjo Bridge That Broke the Album Open
What many listeners remember most vividly is the banjo interlude. In the middle of this progressive metal album, with its down-tuned guitars and complex time signatures, suddenly a banjo appears. It’s almost bluegrass-adjacent. It’s almost Americana. It’s certainly not what you expect from a band being compared to King Crimson and Black Sabbath.
But that’s the production genius of In Absentia. The album refuses to stay in one place. “Trains” shifts between acoustic intimacy and full-band intensity. The banjo moment represents the before—childhood summers, simplicity, the things that will be lost by the album’s end. Producer Tim Palmer understood this. He was mixing for contrasts, for juxtapositions, for the emotional weight of what happens when innocence meets knowledge of darkness.
The production on “Trains” prioritizes clarity and emotional legibility. Every instrument finds its space. The vocals—Wilson’s voice here is almost fragile—are brought forward. The bass and drums create foundation without overwhelming. It’s masterclass production because it never draws attention to itself. You never think about the production. You just feel the song.
Notes About “Trains” by Porcupine Tree
Release Date: September 24, 2002
Duration: 5:30
Genre: Progressive Rock / Neo-Progressive Metal / Alternative Rock
Album: In Absentia (7th studio album, track 2)
Composer/Lyricist: Steven Wilson
Producer: Steven Wilson
Label: Lava Records (Atlantic subsidiary)
Chart Performance: Over 27 million Spotify streams; consistently ranks among band’s most-played tracks
Notable Usage: Featured on various soundtrack compilations; frequently selected as band’s encore closer
Porcupine Tree “Trains” Era Band Details
Album Details
Album: In Absentia
Release Date: September 24, 2002
Label: Lava Records (Atlantic Records subsidiary)
Producer: Steven Wilson
Recording Location: Avatar Studios (New York, London), mixed in Los Angeles
Engineer: Paul Northfield
Mixer: Tim Palmer, Mark O’Donoughue
Mastering: Andy VanDette
Album Concept: Not formally a concept album, but thematically linked songs exploring abuse, trauma, and moral darkness
Commercial Reception: Breakthrough album; sold three times more than any previous Porcupine Tree release
Critical Reception: Metal Storm ranked it #2 of Top 20 albums 2002; widely considered the band’s crowning achievement
Band Members/Personnel
Steven Wilson - Vocals, acoustic & electric guitar, piano, keyboards, banjo
Richard Barbieri - Analog synthesizers, mellotron, Hammond organ, keyboards
Colin Edwin - Bass guitar
Gavin Harrison - Drums, percussion (first album with band)
Dave Gregory - String arrangements
John Wesley - Additional vocals, guitar on other album tracks
Aviv Geffen - Backing vocals on other album tracks
Production Notes
First major label release for Porcupine Tree
First album with new drummer Gavin Harrison (replacing Chris Maitland after eight years)
Marked shift toward progressive metal while retaining acoustic sensibility
Influenced by Steven Wilson’s production work with Opeth (Blackwater Park)
Album available in 5.1 surround sound mix
Deluxe reissue (2017) includes remaster, unreleased demos, and documentary by Lasse Hoile
Interesting Facts About “Trains”
The Childhood Station That Shaped a Career
Steven Wilson grew up near a train station. Not as a tourist attraction detail, but as an everyday sensory reality. He would lie in bed hearing trains pass. That sound became encoded into his nervous system, into his sense of time and passage. Every time he hears a train now, he’s transported back.
This is crucial context for “Trains.” The song isn’t about trains as metaphor. It’s about trains as memory trigger. The hiss Wilson evokes—”the hiss of the train at the railway head”—is a specific acoustic experience, not a poetic flourish. He’s recreating the exact sensation that would unlock childhood memories. For some listeners, this triggers their own train memories. For others, it’s the principle of the thing: a sound that can transport you backward through decades.
The Album That Changed Everything
In Absentia was ranked Metal Storm’s number 2 of the Top 20 albums of 2002 and number 46 on the Top 200 albums of all time, with AllMusic praising that “the group delivers a jarring tour-de-force, replete with strong songs, cryptic lyrical musings, virtuoso musicianship, and lush orchestration.”
But here’s what made In Absentia revolutionary: it created a new template. Porcupine Tree proved you didn’t have to choose between prog complexity and metal heaviness, between emotional vulnerability and instrumental ambition. You could have childhood train sets AND 60-ton angels. You could have summers slipping away AND dark examinations of human pathology. The album influenced an entire generation of musicians—Haken, Plini, TesseracT—who would build careers on similar reconciliations of opposing impulses.
And “Trains” was the proof of concept. If this song worked—if it could open an album about trauma and abuse with genuine sweetness—then anything was possible.
The Live Phenomenon Nobody Expected
During Porcupine Tree’s reunion tour in 2022, after a twelve-year hiatus, Wilson announced that instead of rock covers, they would play “Trains,” “the nearest that any of his ‘failures’ has been to being a hit,” which has now been streamed over 27 million times on Spotify.
What’s remarkable is that “Trains” was never meant to be a hit. It didn’t chart. It wasn’t released as a single initially (though a promo was circulated). Wilson was explicitly trying to move Porcupine Tree toward heavier territory, influenced by extreme metal. Yet somehow, across two decades, “Trains” accumulated tens of millions of listeners discovering its beauty organically.
When the band plays it live, audiences often sing along. People raise their hands during the chorus. It’s become the emotional climax of Porcupine Tree performances despite being one of their softest, most vulnerable songs. That tells you something about how music actually connects—not through commercial strategy, but through authentic emotional excavation.
Common Questions
Q: What does “Always the summers are slipping away” mean? A: The line captures the universal experience of temporal displacement—how summers that seemed infinite during childhood pass in what feels like seconds as we age. It’s both literal (childhood summers passing into adulthood) and metaphorical (life’s best moments disappearing before we can hold them).
Q: Is “Trains” part of the album’s abuse/darkness concept? A: Thematically connected but thematically lighter. Wilson explained the song as childhood memories, while other tracks deal explicitly with family abuse. “Trains” represents innocence before knowledge of darkness—it’s the “before” that gives weight to the album’s darker themes.
Q: Why is there a banjo in the middle of a metal album? A: The banjo represents the pre-metal, pre-complicated version of Porcupine Tree. It’s a production choice that emphasizes emotional contrast—the album shifts between heavy and vulnerable, and the banjo marks a moment of vulnerability within the song.
Q: Did Steven Wilson base this on a true story? A: Wilson draws from genuine childhood memory—specifically his experience growing up near a train station. However, the song isn’t autobiographical in explicit detail. It’s more about capturing the emotional truth of nostalgia and temporal displacement.
Q: How does “Trains” compare to other Porcupine Tree songs? A: “Trains” is among their most accessible and emotionally direct. Compared to more complex tracks like “Anesthetize” (11+ minutes) or “Arriving Somewhere But Not Here,” it’s relatively concise and straightforward. But compared to commercial pop, it’s still quintessential Porcupine Tree: intricate production, proggy song structure, and Wilson’s distinctive melancholic vocal approach.