Seventy-four minutes of pure perfection.
Sounds that can't be made --- Marillion --- 2012 (Ear Music)
Marillion's first “proper” album in four years --- the acoustic set “Less is more”, while certainly an album is not what I'd consider a new one from them --- comes on the back of considerable fanfare from the band and their website, and with I would think high expectations from their fans, certainly this one. A Marillion fanatic since Day One (October 25 1982), I had enjoyed (that is, loved) every single album of theirs up until the year “Somwhere else” hit. Something of a sledgehammer blow to me, this album refused to reveal itself to my ears, and persists in doing so. No matter how many times I listened to it, how carefully, with or without as much bias as I could, there was very little I liked about that album. Well, to be fair, I liked it but I did not in any way love it. I tried, I failed, I eventually gave up.
That, it has to be said, shook my hithero solid faith in the band. Up till then, I bought every album as it was released without question or delay, not expecting but
knowing that it would be great. And it always was. Without exception. Until that album. So after that I became, for the first time in my life and the first time in my association with the band, wary of future releases. Oh, I wanted that album to be a blip, make no mistake, and I didn't really see any sort of possibility I would lose my devotion to Marillion, but whereas before I had been as certain about the quality of their future albums as I was that the sun would rise, now there was just that tiny little sliver of doubt, that almost infinitesimally small, but still there, worry that my heroes might fail to live up to the high standards they had set for themselves, and which I had judged them by.
In the armour of my belief in them, the most miniscule ch1nk had appeared, and I could only hope and pray it would not lead to larger tears in the fabric of my --- let's be brutally honest here --- adoration of this band.
And to be fair, in general that armour has held, even strengthened. With the release of “Happiness is the road” the following year my faith was repaired, and although that album is not perfect --- and the only one since “Somewhere else” to even fall left of that divide --- it was nine thousand percent better than the 2007 effort. This was followed in 2009 by the aforementioned “Less is more”, which I did buy, but as it was basically a reworking of older songs (their version, I suppose you might say, of Bon Jovi's “This left feels right”) I didn't pay it that much attention. I liked it, yes, but it's hard to get overly excited about songs you already know, even if they're presented in a new and interesting way.
So “Happiness is the road” began the healing process, and now we're five years down from the site of that blip, that bump, that unaccountable twist in the fabric of Marillion spacetime, where suddenly the old laws I had become accustomed to over a period of thirty-five years briefly failed to apply. Since then, I've returned to the universe I know, and here really Marillion can do no wrong. Or can they? I mentioned “Happiness” was not a perfect album: it's not. But to be fair, even going back three years prior to “Somewhere else”, 2004's “Marbles”, while a brilliant album in its own right, did suffer from the odd bad track, which again is something I had never, up to then, associated with Steve and Steve and the boys. However, in the case of that album, the rest of it was so top-notch that I felt justified in just claiming the bad track --- “Ocean cloud”, featured recently on the “Bad Apples” section --- was just that: one bad track, and the rest of the album, taken as a whole, was excellent, just what I would and did expect from Marillion.
Not so with “Somewhere else” though. No matter how I tried, no matter how many excuses I made or how I looked at the album, it pretty much sucked, and I had to face up to the fact that my idols had suddenly developed feet of clay, if only (hopefully) temporarily. Perhaps it made me a more mature music listener: I stopped just accepting each new album and started really listening to, judging, and rating it. I realised with something of a shock that no matter how good the band or artiste, it's always possible to make one bad album. On the flip side though, it should and hopefully always is possible to put that behind you and come back stronger than ever. That's the sign of a really good artiste.
So have my heroes come through for me this time around? Well, to be fair I haven't listened to the album all the way through yet, so this will be essentially a first impression. One thing I do notice is that this is one of the shortest Hogarth era albums, in terms of tracks, and by far the longest of any Marillion album, clocking in at a mighty total of 74 minutes and nineteen seconds running time: for those of you who can't do the math, that's 1 hour, fourteen minutes and nineteen seconds. That's a lot of music!
It's also the first Marillion album to feature three songs which are over ten minutes long: the opener runs for a staggering seventeen and a half minutes --- a feat they haven't equalled since the aforementioned "Ocean cloud", and prior to that, 1982's “Grendel” --- while there is also a fourteen minute song and the closer is just over ten and a half minutes. This of course adequately explains the paradox of how this can be both a short and an incredibly long album at the same time. But length of songs is only a factor if they're any good, and whereas before 2007 I would have just assumed that would be the case, now I'm a little more nervous, eager not to repeat the experience of “Somewhere else”. So, as those Americans say, what's under the hood?
As mentioned, the album opens with the longest track on it, and the second-longest Marillon track ever, beating out their epic “Grendel” by about fifteen seconds (I don't count the title track from “This strange engine”, as although it's shown as over thirty minutes long, over half of that is silence, so the actual song itself runs for about fifteen minutes; “Ocean cloud”, however, runs for approx twenty seconds longer). It's also the most outright political song they've ever written. Marillion have dabbled in current affairs and the state of the world on tracks like “The last century for man” and “When I meet God”, but this is the first time they've come out strongly to talk about a political subject since 1989's "Berlin", the very year that barrier fell.
With the simple title “Gaza”, you know what it's going to be about, and though Steve Hogarth has confirmed the band is not taking any particular political stand, neither condoning the attacks by Hamas on Israel or seeking to denigrate the jewish nation in any way, the song manages lyrically to navigate what is mostly a tricky path through a minefield of possible controversy, leaving essentially the politics and the warring factions, and the reasons for the ongoing conflict behind, and looking instead at the human face of the refugees struggling in the Gaza Strip.
Opening on spacy synth lines that contain sound effects that could be rockets flying, walls falling and then definitely people praying, it suddenly breaks out on a big heavy militaristic melody with an eastern tinge, as Hogarth takes the persona of one of the refugees relating his tale of woe, the drumbeat becoming almost mechanical and Steve Rothery's hard guitar cutting in angrily, counterpointing Hogarth's pleading vocal delivery. Marillion have come a long way since the days of Fish and the Jester, and though I love and always will love those first four albums, this is a new band for a new millennium, and one thing Marillion have always known how to do is adapt, change and survive, remain stubbornly relevant. Here they mix screaming guitar solos with soft synth backdrops, almost orchestral keyswork and patches where there is almost no music, ambient in the truest sense of the word, while above and along and within it all floats the sad, despairing, tired and bluntly angry voice of the man they simply call “H”, who has become by now identified as the signature sound of the “new” Marillion, a band which has been going for over two decades.
At this point, I think it's prudent and indeed important to give you Hogarth's thoughts on the song, as taken from the article in Wiki:
”This is a song for the people – especially the children – of Gaza. It was written after many conversations with ordinary Palestinians living in the refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank. I spoke also to Israelis, to NGO workers, to a diplomat unofficially working in Jerusalem, and took their perspectives into account whilst writing the lyric. It is not my/our intention to smear the Jewish faith or people – we know many Jews are deeply critical of the current situation – and nothing here is intended to show sympathy for acts of violence, whatever the motivation, but simply to ponder upon where desperation inevitably leads. Many Gazan children are now the grandchildren of Palestinians BORN in the refugee camps - so called "temporary" shelters. Temporary for over 50 years now. Gaza is today, effectively, a city imprisoned without trial."
That really says more about the sentiments behind this opening song than I ever could. As you would probably expect from such a long track, it goes through various changes and different movements, but it is I think in the tenth minute that it really starts to come together, with some soft keys and gentle percussion, echoey guitar joined by Steve's singing before a whole choir comes in to help him and the true heart of the piece reveals itself. Against Mark Kelly's simple piano notes and Steve Rothery's impassioned but restrained guitar Hogarth mourns
”Nothing's ever simple/ That's for sure/ There are grieving mothers/ On both sides of the line” followed by a breakout emotional guitar solo from Rothery as the other Steve roars
"It just ain't right! / It just ain't right!” and goes on to say
"We all want peace and freedom / That's for sure/ But peace won't come / From standing on our necks”.
An incredibly moving and emotional song, and pretty much worth the price of purchase on its own. I am impressed, heartened for what's to come, but I have to ensure that “Gaza” is not just one good track among seven bad ones. I don't expect that, not in any way, but I want --- I want so much! --- for this album to be the return to the great Marillion albums of the nineties and early noughties that “Happiness is the road” and “Marbles” so very nearly were. So on we go, shaken and moved, a tear (okay, more than one: Hogarth has that effect) in my eye, and next we meet the title track. It's not a seventeen-minute behemoth like the one we've just heard, and from the off it's far more uptempo, with a driving drumbeat from Ian Mosley and almost new-wave keyboards from Kelly, a pulsing, thumping bass from Pete Trewavas, who often gets overlooked on Marillion albums, but who is one half of a pretty perfect rhythm section.
Kelly's keyboards change to an almost orchestral, strings-driven sound, and Rothery's guitar adds the final touch, with some great backing vocals. Then some dramatic downturn keys and some very ELO-style vocoder work before Hogarth returns with the vocal, the sound now quite bright and boppy, very optimistic with Rothery's signature sound, until about halfway in it goes into a lovely, laidback, soft and lush keys melody with flecks of guitar around the edges, the tempo slowing right down and we get one of Mark Kelly's famous keyboard solos, followed by one from Steve on the guitar. THIS is more like the Marillion I know and love! Hopefully, with two openers like this, high quality such as this can be maintained throughout the album. If it can, I'll be a very happy reviewer, and an even happier Marillion fan.
“Pour my love” opens on lovely soft digital piano, faintly reminiscent of the great Tony Banks, then Trewavas's slick bass slides in, and I'd hazard this to be a ballad; Marillion are certainly not averse to them, though they don't sprinkle them around their albums like some bands tend to. There's a great smooth guitar sound to this too, and it sort of puts me in mind of those old soul classics from the sixties and seventies, nice gentle vocal from Steve Hogarth and a beautiful and expressive solo from Steve Rothery. A clever little keyboard part at the very end recalls the opening of “Beautiful” from the “Afraid of sunlight” album.
Also slow in tempo but not quite a ballad, “Power” rides along on a heartbeat bass pattern from Trewavas and Mosley's measured percussion, which shows how well the two knit together as an almost seamless unit. With a certain ominous feel to it, the vocal is almost isolated, with just the rhythm section backing Hogarth as Kelly and Rothery add little flashes of colour to the tune without taking it over. Different story in the chorus, where both come in strongly, but their retreat for the verses helps build the sense of tension in the song, making it all the more effective when they power (sorry!) in.
That takes us into the second-longest track, just over fourteen minutes of “Montreal”, which opens again on a soft piano line but accompanied by a striding bass line with the very barest of percussion, then everything, including the vocal, falls away for a sweeping synthesiser melody before Rothery's guitar throws a few soft notes in, and Hogarth comes back in with the vocal, now set against the gentle rise and fall of Mark Kelly's susurrating keyboard soundscape, then a memory from over thirty years ago as he runs off the introduction to “Fugazi” on the piano for a moment, before switching to mellifluous organ, Mosley's drums coming in stronger now, and we're only five minutes into the song...
It's another instrumental section then, with some chiming soft guitar from Steve, almost sitar-like at times, and a deep, rolling keyboard line from Mark, peppered with other keyboard and piano melodies as Steve H comes back in to relate the trials of being on the road, the people you leave behind and how hard it is to see your children grow up without you in their life, but it's all for the love of music and they wouldn't have it any other way. Still, it's a touching and very personal glimpse into the private thoughts of the band, mostly Hogarth, as he writes all the lyrics. Another fine Rothery solo as the song enters its tenth minute, and it all speeds up in the last two minutes, everything coming together for the conclusion of the song.
Almost Peter Gabriel-like in its mood and structure, “Invisible ink” actually clocks in as the shortest track, a few seconds short of six minutes. It's a slow, morose, somewhat brooding song again carried on Pete's bass, which is soon joined by Mark's soft piano upon which it takes an upswing in terms both of mood and tempo, Steve Rothery's guitar then taking command as the song breaks out, Ian's drumming fiercer and more insistent as it grows in intensity. The guitar in “Lucky man” reminds me very much of “Asylum Satellite #1” from “Happiness is the road”, and certainly starts off heavily but then settles down into something of a guitar groove, with Hogarth's voice showing just how powerful and controlled it is as he belts out the lines without a single trace of effort or strain, despite the strong backing from the guitar and bass.
It's hard to know whether Hogarth is being sarcastic/ironic when he sings
”I truly am/ A lucky man/ I have everything I want”, or whether he is being thankful for the life he has achieved, but I think the latter. Marillion don't tend to write anything that doesn't come from the heart. The closer is another long track, though of the three long ones on this album it's the shortest, just over ten and a half minutes. Opening, as so many of the songs here do, on Mark Kelly's delicate piano line, “The sky above the rain” reveals itself to be a tender ballad in the style of “House” from “Marillion.com”, with some lovely slide guitar from Rothery and a soft, almost laconic vocal from Hogarth. Strings-style keyboards rise like the morning mist from the music, the gentle piano still rippling along the melody like a stream. The tale, again, like “House”, of the breakup of a relationship, it's tender, touching and really pulls at the heartstrings as the protagonist tries to see the good in the world when his own world has fallen apart. Featuring some of the best work from Steve Rothery on the album, it's a fitting and exceptional closer to an album which has certainly restored my faith in Marillion, if indeed it needed to be restored. If not, it's strengthened it, and I think that tiny spark of doubt I had in my mind since 2007 is flickering, fading, all but gone.
TRACKLISTING
1. Gaza
2. Sounds that can't be made
3. Pour my love
4. Power
5. Montreal
6. Invisible ink
7. Lucky man
8. The sky above the rain
It's taken a long time --- five years --- but I think I can now say that Marillion have returned to the excellence of albums like “Radiation”, “Afraid of sunlight” and “Brave”, and that they can only go from strength to strength now. Okay, there won't be any hit singles from this album --- all of the tracks are too long --- but then they've never been about chart success. For Marillion, certainly since Steve Hogarth took over, they've always been about the music. And here, they shine as never before. Vindication? Certainly, without the shadow of a doubt. No, not even that one.
Sounds that can't be made? You've just been listening to them.