MARILLION.COM

There's one thing above everything else which make this album essential, a photo of me appears on the sleeve. Admittedly there are I think about 500 others as well, and I'll leave it to you to surmise which one I am. One of Marillion's many marketing ploys was to invite fans to send a passport photo to them, which they then used to cover the entire sleeve in a collage the pictures. This of course guaranteed that they would sell at least 500 copies, and it certainly worked for me!

As for the music itself, Believe it or not, at times the band actually sound HAPPY. It's not immediately apparent, "A legacy" is a bit of a plodder for a starter, but by track two, "Deserve", they're starting to rock out. Jings! Crivens!, (Scottish exclamations meaning "goodness gracious!"), there's even a screaming sax solo. After pausing for breath on the lovely soft "Go!", they're at it again, partying on with "Rich". There's a nice lyric on this track to the effect "Failure isn't about falling down, failure is staying down". It doesn't quite fit in with the music, but it make you think a bit. Things drift a bit thereafter, until the west coast, almost county twang of "Tumble down the years".

The album closes with the two longest, most progressive tracks. "Interior Lulu" is a bit of a hotchpotch with Hogarth rather over doing the vocals, but there are some nice guitars and keyboards. "House" is opened by a muted trumpet, which solo's again later. It has something of a lazy lounge jazz feel, very soft and relaxed, with only the pained vocals belying the fact that it really is Marillion.

Marrilion.com certainly sees the band exploring different directions, something which many of their fans found difficult to stomach, and lead to Marillion insisting they were NOT progressive. Sometimes the testing of the boundaries works, sometimes it doesn't.

Steve Wilson of Porcupine Tree mixed a number of the tracks, but does not actually perform on the album.

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