Progressive quartet The Pineapple Thief has been busy. The group from Southwest England released It Leads to This, its 15th studio album, in February. Led by guitarist and songwriter Bruce Soord, the band is currently on tour in the U.S., with a December date at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz; European and UK dates will follow well into 2025. Amid all that activity, The Pineapple Thief has found time to record and release a five-song EP, Last to Run.
In the earliest days of The Pineapple Thief, the group wasn’t a group at all. Instead it was the name used to describe the music made by Soord, as featured on Abducting the Unicorn, a 1999 debut album for which he wrote all the songs, played nearly all the instruments and sang all the vocal parts. With a style that has been likened to a mashup of Porcupine Tree and Radiohead, Soord crafted an engaging set of songs. He employed the same approach for 2002’s 137 and Variations on a Dream from 2003. But shortly after the latter’s release, he made the decision to put together an actual group, one that could play live.
Over the next decade-plus, The Pineapple Thief continued to create and release well-received albums that drew on the melodic side of progressive rock, with inventive and compelling arrangements. Songs often explored themes of isolation, conflict and a melancholy air. Soord continued to write alone, and the overall character of the group’s music reflected that.
Then 2014 brought major changes to The Pineapple Thief. Drummer Gavin Harrison joined the group. Harrison’s peerless prog pedigree already included tenure with two of prog’s biggest acts: Porcupine Tree and King Crimson. And while Harrison didn’t take a major writing role in either of those groups, he would collaborate extensively with Bruce Soord.
The change showed. “For 20 years, the way I wrote music was on my own,” Soord explains. But once he engaged Harrison as a songwriting partner, the entire dynamic shifted. “When he came on board, I would work on an idea, send it to Gavin, and he’d go, ‘Oh, I like this,’” Soord says. “He’d add some ideas, chop it around, send it back to me.” There was a leisurely flow to that process. “I’d get a part from Gavin, and I’d spend the next couple of days mulling it over until I was really happy with it, then I’d send it back.”
That approach—Soord writing lyrics and working with Harrison to craft melodies—served The Pineapple Thief well; the run of albums beginning with 2018’s Dissolution onward are considered some of the group’s best work. But as they approached the making of their latest full-length release, 2024’s It Leads to This, The Pineapple Thief changed their working methods yet again.
“There’s a track on the new album called ‘Rubicon,’” Soord explains. “Gavin said to me, ‘I’ve got this rhythm.’ It’s in a quite challenging time signature, a sort of 5/4 shuffle.” They played together, and the song grew out of that spontaneous jamming. “That kind of thing is very old-school,” Soord says. “It’s a sort of ’70s mentality to writing: Put a bunch of guys in a studio, and six weeks later an album comes out.”
That method stands in stark contrast to the unhurried approach to which Soord had become accustomed. “It’s very pressured,” he admits. “For days you’re at absolutely 100% concentration: ‘I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to get it right.’” He’s very pleased with the results as showcased on It Leads to This, and fans and critics alike tend to agree. “But it’s intense when you’re not used to it!” he admits.
Soord is now completely sold on the idea, and says that the group will use a similar approach next time they’re making an album. “And we’ll do even more with the other guys in the band—John [Sykes, bass] and Steve [Kitch, keyboards]—to get it back to that romantic vision of what a band is supposed to be,” he promises. “When you’ve been together on the road like we are now, you become close. And that really helps create the songs. You get a lot when everybody can contribute; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
While the methods used to create, develop and complete their albums may have changed over the years, there’s a continuity running through the group’s work. Like many albums from The Pineapple Thief, It Leads to This is a concept album. “I think all of our albums are, loosely,” Soord says. “They’re all about where I am. Lyrically there’s a lot of you and I and us.”
It Leads to This focuses on what’s happening in the world, viewed from a personal perspective and with an eye toward how it impacts individuals and relationships. “An individual grows older, has children… your sense of mortality becomes more vivid,” Soord says. He believes that writing from a personal perspective in that manner results in themes that are universal and relatable, qualities that are found throughout the Pineapple Thief’s body of work. “Because we’re all in the same boat, really. And that’s what I aim to achieve.”
The Pineapple Thief and Randy McStine play at 7:30pm on Dec. 8 at the Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $27/adv, $32/door. catalystclub.com.
PULL QUOTE: In the earliest days of The Pineapple Thief, the group wasn’t a group at all. Instead it was the name used to describe the music made by Soord, as featured on Abducting the Unicorn, a 1999 debut album for which he wrote all the songs, played nearly all the instruments and sang all the vocal parts.
