There'll be few if any who know me who'll be surprised to see this album here. One of my alltime favourites from any genre, this is the one that really set me on the road to my discovery and subsequent love of progressive rock. I've already gone into the album in minute detail in my journal, even featuring it in the section "Albums that changed my life", because it did, so here I'd just like to say a few words (yeah, Trollheart: that'll be the day!
) about why I love it so much.
Script for a jester's tear --- Marillion --- 1983
I say this album started my love of prog, but that's of course not really accurate: I had been into Genesis, Supertramp and Rush for some time before this came on the scene. However, what Marillion's debut album did open my eyes to was that there was another side to prog rock, a "real" side, if you will. Up to then, all the albums I'd listened to from the above mostly focussed on fantasy, mythological or abstract themes, with a very few exceptions. I had never realised that prog rock could be rooted in the now, in the here, or to somewhat quote Fish from the followup album, "Fugazi", in the real.
Without question their darkest album until 1991's "Brave", "Script" is full of morose songs covering such subjects as loneliness, isolation, madness, addiction, suicide, betrayal and war. Yeah, a real laugh riot.
But when I listened to it I didn't hear this downbeat, often depressing side of Marillion; in fact, really until I started reviewing it for my journal I never even noticed how dark it is, and that's I think because the sadness, the despair and the heartbreaking sense of solitude are all wrapped in such beautiful, lush, sweeping melodies. When Mark Kelly runs off a superb keyboard solo in the middle of "The web", you for a moment forget it's about a woman trying to face the world again and live her life after a bad relationship, and when Fish whispers "Death!" in response to the query "Halt! Who goes there?" although it's unsettling it's more theatrical and dramatic than harrowing.
Marillion's strength at this time was I think that they could take normal, everyday themes like love and loss, drug addiction and even social segregation and build memorable and challenging melodies around them, and of course Fish was and is a wordsmith
par excellence, often a little too obscure with his lyrics, but then after all, this is prog rock!
As an album "Script" has few if any uplifting or even uptempo tracks, and there are only six in all, something of a gamble for a debut album, even though some of them are eight minutes long. There are passages in "The Web" and "Forgotten sons" that "bop along", but even so these are dark, dark songs. As I mentioned in my journal, I would almost class Marillion as a new subgenre, at least for their first three or four albums: Dark Progressive Rock. Few if any of their songs during the Fish era from 1982-1987 held much in the way of hope, and yet they were not seen as any sort of a doomy or gloomy band, quite the opposite. Tribute to their music I guess.
With six tracks only it's a fair bet that none of them are going to be bad, and none are. Every song here is a masterpiece, lovingly crafted and proudly presented for your delectation. If there isn't a tear in your eye as the wailing guitar and mournful piano lead out the title track, please return to the planet you came from, cos you ain't a human being.
Sadly, after this album Marillion would change their style slightly, going for shorter, almost commercial songs {"Punch and Judy", "Sugar mice" and of course "Kayleigh") and with the departure of Fish would go the biggest progressive rock influence on the band, but as it stood in 1983, this was a debut that was going to be hard to beat. It still ranks as one of the very best albums in my collection.
TRACKLISTING
1. Script for a jester's tear
2. He knows you know
3. The Web
4. Garden party
5. Chelsea Monday
6. Forgotten sons