HAPPINESS IS THE ROAD

Not being terribly familiar with recent Marillion offerings, I was unaware just how far the band had strayed from anything progressive. Instead, we have a good pop double album with a couple of long songs. Many of the tracks blend together due to their lack of any real individual identity. Melodies seem uninspired and uninteresting. H is a wonderful singer, but he doesn't do much in the way of wonderful singing here. The band plays standard sorts of parts. I know the band is talented. I've heard them create some impressive music over the years. Yet I can't really understand why they are content never to stretch their legs or really get up and boogie. On the whole, I must say, this album is spectacularly dull and that there is really very little to recommend it as a release worth purchasing.

A couple songs are average, though none of them go any beyond merely okay. The best songs start coming at the end of the second disc--guaranteed that you will be mildly catatonic by the time you reach their strongest compositions. Half the World is a neat little song that wouldn't be out of place on a Coldplay album. Whatever Is Wrong with You follows this with some nice chorus melodies, the closest H actually gets to putting some volume and interest in his voice. In fact, if more of the album were like these songs, we'd have something more worthy of looking into. Instead, before and after these tracks, the music sits like noise in a jar of molasses. The Man from Planet Marzipan has a couple of neat moments, but on the whole it suffers from a lack of energy as well.

It's kind of a strange thing to say that a band isn't good enough at writing pop and should instead try their hand at writing prog, but that's the case. Marillion's pop is not very deep or compelling, while when they were the leaders of the neo-prog movement they made some of the best music of the 80s. This album is only for serious fans of modern Marillion. Everyone else will likely be pretty thoroughly bored.

Share this MARILLION review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to LiquidEternity
• Report this review (#184474)
• Buy MARILLION music online with PA partners
• Show all MARILLION MP3/Stream
• Go to MARILLION page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Happiness Is The Road page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for MARILLION related discussions