Brave --- Marillion --- 1994 (EMI)
Brave in every sense of the word. As the third album with new vocalist Steve Hogarth, this was the band's decision to return to progressive rock, having tried and failed to expand their audience via shorter, more commerically-oriented songs on the previous two albums. Ironically, Marillion's greatest chart success has been and probably always will be "Kayleigh", which just fell short of the number one spot and comes from their other concept album and one steeped in the traditions of classic progressive rock, "Misplaced childhood". This one, however, also ranks quite uniquely as Marillion's darkest and most mature album, with its themes of incest, rape and abuse, and in some ways could perhaps even be seen as a sequel of sorts to that 1985 third album.
Written completely as an idea based around a news report about a girl found wandering without any idea of her identity, the storyline fleshes this out and hints at what Steve Hogarth believes could have happened to her. In that sense it's entirely fictional, as it isn't based on any real details, but who knows? He could have come close to the truth in his writing. Whatever the case, the album is bleak and cynical in its themes and does not offer any solutions or excuses for what happens to the girl. There are apparently two endings to the album, one "happy" and one not so happy, but as I've only ever owned the one CD I'm sticking here with mine, which happens to be the more upbeat of the two.
The scene is set from the beginning, with the sound of water and a foghorn honking before Mark Kelly's luxuriant keyboards smooth their way in as "Bridge" introduces us to the heroine of the story, leaning over the side and looking down into the water, probably contemplating throwing herself in. A nice little slow piano then accompanies Hogarth's voice as he sings the first few lines then the song moves on into "Living with the big lie", driven on echoey keys and Steve Rothery's crying guitar as Hogarth imagine the girl's early life, initially calm and pleasant until things begin to spiral out of control. The song gets harder under Ian Mosley's hammering drumwork meshing with Kelly's sweeping organ, painting flourishes over the backdrop as we go through the girl's schooldays and she realises
"When to kiss and when to kick/ When to keep your head down/ When they're choosing sides".
The song slows down then on soft synth and sound effects, with Hogarth's voice softening too for a few moments before Mosley and Rothery bring the tempo right back up and organ from Kelly punches through and Rothery goes off on a superb solo trip that takes the song to its conclusion and into "Runaway", which begins low-key with the sounds of an altercation and slamming door as Kelly's dolorous organ comes in, Rothery following him in and Hogarth relates the tale of the runaway girl recaptured:
"Did you cry when they dragged you home/ Put a lock on the door and the telephone?" The track picks up power and intensity, getting angrier and more frustrated as it goes along, Hogarth's voice mirroring the music and the mood. An anguished solo from Rothery coupled with some sterling bass work from Peter Trewavas as the piece reaches its climax as we hear the sad tale of the abused girl:
"You'd freeze to death before you'd/ Share a room with them again/ And you'd die before you'd let him /Get his hands on you again!"
The longest track on the album is a suite, "Goodbye to all that", which runs for over twelve minutes and is broken into five sections. The first, "Wave", is a short piano piece which will resurface later in "The great escape", while "Mad" is, as you might expect, a frenetic guitar-oriented piece that bounces all over the place, with Mosley bashing away at the skins and Hogarth's voice rising in frustration and confusion as the girl tries to sort out her life, screaming
"Tell me I'm mad / Well you're a fine one to decide!" She ends up in a crack house, as "The opium den" begins, where everything quiets down again with droning synth and soft percussion, a kind of sussurating riff running through the keyboard melody and slowly building. This part is mostly instrumental, though Hogarth does mutter some words as the music plays, and it's pretty much a duet between Rothery and Kelly until we hit the fourth movement, "The slide", where Trewavas takes over with a slow, doomy bassline and some sound effects are thrown in, Rothery screeching along the guitar strings to make wailing noises, before slow percussion and piano slips in. A quite atmospheric piece, it builds up to something of a crescendo where Rothery's guitar just screams out the frustration and confusion the girl must be feeling.
From here it's piano and vocal, as Hogarth comes back in to advise the police that
"You think you got here/ Just in time/ But you're twenty years too late." A big thundering instrumetnal part brings "Standing in the swing" to a close, finishes the suite and piles directly into the heavy rock "Hard as love", with some great guitar and thumping percussion, Hogarth's voice now defiant and angry as it appears the girl is now on the streets and selling her body. Fine organ work from Kelly here too. It stops in the middle and goes all quiet on the back of Rothery's tingling guitar, building back up as Hogarth squeezes every ounce of passion he can out of his voice for the big finish.
We finally have a ballad after all that, as Kelly opts for a simple piano for "Hollow man", the vocal so low from Hogarth that it's at times almost inaudible as he considers the weaknesses of people. It sounds like there's violin on this, but as none is credited (and it's not normally an instrument utilised by Marillion) I'll have to assume it's made on the synth. Big guitar intro then to the marching "Alone again in the lap of luxury", with chiming guitar and measured drumming and like much of the material on this album it builds up from a slow beginning into something of a frantic ending, mostly thanks to Steve Rothery's fretwork. It seems to depict the girl's fantasy of what her life could have been, instead of how it turned out:
"This is a photograph of who I could be" and ends on a little coda which they call "Now wash your hands", which has a clever little line as its only lyric:
"You give up hope/ You settle down/ With your favourite soap/ Now wash your hands." What I love about this is the double meaning: the idea of the wife deciding she can do nothing about her husband's appetites and leaving him to it while she turns up the TV to drown out her daughter/step-daughter's cries for help, and the washing of the hands being both related to soap, as is the telly programme, as well as absolving yourself of all responsibility. The imagery is stark and very real, and extremely effective.
Another hard rocking track is next, with the sound of possibly train wheels or maybe water, I'm not sure what it's meant to be, but "Paper lies" powers along nicely with a strong vocal and driving drumbeat. This ends on an atmospheric twist which slips seamlessly into the title track, carried on droning synthesiser with a sort of horn sound behind it, kind of like an accordion. It slows everything down, with what sounds this time like uileann pipes giving the song a very celtic feel. It's quite ambient really with a fine restrained vocal from Steve Hogarth, amd brings us into what I consider the standout of the album. "The great escape" is broken into two parts, the first, called "The last of you", recalls some of the themes from "Goodbye to all that", with a gentle piano opening accompanying Hogarth's vocal before percussion and guitar break in, the pace a slow, stately, almost funereal one, until about two minutes in when it soars into a powerful passionate piano and keyboard melody, Hogarth's voice angry and disbelieving as the girl snarls
"Just when I thought I'd seen/ The last of you/ You come here/ Scratchin' at my door" and demands an apology, an explanation for what was done to her, and asks
"Why did you hurt the very one/ You should have protected?"
Part two then is "Fallin' from the moon", built on another piano melody and chiming guitar with slow, measured drumming as Hogarth remarks
"A bridge is not a high place .../ When you've fallen from the moon." Wonderful evocative guitar solo to close and then we hear the sounds of water again as we end up back where we began, before "Made again" finally brings us a happy ending, with an acoustic guitar opening, very simple and clean, Hogarth singing softly against this, eyes wide with new wonder at the world. The band comes in to accompany him then as the song takes on a jaunty, upbeat tone as the album comes to an end.
TRACKLISTING
1. Bridge
2. Living with the big lie
3. Runaway
4. Goodbye to all that
(i) Wave
(ii) Mad
(iii) The opium den
(iv) The slide
(v) Standing in the swing
5. Hard as love
6. The hollow man
7. Alone again in the lap of luxury
8. Paper lies
9. Brave
10. The great escape
(i) The last of you
(ii) Fallin' from the moon
11. Made again
After "Script for a jester's tear", this is far and away my favourite Marillion album. After two albums of more or less basic rock on "Season's end" and "Holidays in Eden", Marillion returned to what they did best and revisited the painful world of "Misplaced childhood", to take a more mature and experienced look at youth and growing up, and what can befall the most innocent through no fault of their own. The title is appropriate in two ways: the heroine of the story is brave in that she gets away from her abusive father and useless mother, and tries to make a life for herself (although in the alternate ending to the album she jumps from the bridge and drowns) and it was also a very brave and bold decision for the band to take, knowing they were losing touch with their fans and wishing to return to their progressive rock roots, but still tackling a very sensitive and in many ways taboo subject.
It didn't pay off for them commercially, as though singles were taken from the album this is not one that lends itself to hits, and nor were there any. It did reasonably well in the album charts, getting into the top ten but behind the previous two albums and a long way off the band's best-ever showing of a number one slot for "Misplaced childhood". But critically the album was acclaimed and it has gone down as one of the fan favourites. You could almost hear Fish singing this, though profuse credit must be given to Steve Hogarth, who conceptualised the whole thing and wrote almost all of the lyrics alone.
After this, perhaps rather bizarrely, Marillion would revert to the mostly straight rock they had been moving away from, with an attendant slide down the charts, something the band have never recovered from. But charts are for pop songs, and while it's nice to see your favourite band there, Marillion have always been more about the music and the fans, two things that have ensured they are still popular as ever, over thirty years since they released their debut. They may have changed their format slightly, but with albums like "Marbles" and last year's triumphant "Sounds that can't be made" I feel they're slowly edging back to the progressive rock format they helped champion and revive in the 1980s.
But it's unlikely they'll ever record an album like this again. Unique, dark, mature, controversial. But above all, brave.