I'm gonna try my best to avoid the side-stuff and just wait for the album, which probably won't be a problem. Kind of a bummer that he's dropping the album so early during the year, because from my own historical point of view, albums dropped in the first 3-4 months very rarely have the legs to be up there among my favorites at the end of the year. No matter the artist or album, that has just been the case for me. For some reason it seems that most of the best stuff drops in the second half of the year, and the albums you are really digging during January/February/March kinda gets lost in the mix somewhere.
I don't have any expectations for this to be a top10 album of 2015, but as long as it's a good album, I will be happy, and knowing that it is Steven Wilson, it most likely will be. There's always something to admire about his albums. Even an album like Raven, which I think was his weakest solo album, and nowhere near as good as the praise it got, it was still a great sounding album, had a great concept behind it, some beautiful imagery (The Raven music video), and some good music.