SUSHI: LIVE IN UTRECHT

In the early years of the Dick Brothers record company, as Fish adjusted to life outside the confines of the major labels and tried to regain something resembling a viable financial footing, Fish would issue a fairly extensive series of "official bootlegs" - cheaply-packaged official releases, largely sourced from good soundboard tapes, of live shows of his. The idea was that, since bootleggers were clearly making bank on crappy audience recordings of Marillion and Fish concerts, why shouldn't he beat them at their own game? Sushi is the last of this initial burst of live releases, and is the only one to include a show from 1993 and the Songs From the Mirror tour.

If you are flatly not interested in hearing Fish play cover versions, you might consider that a minus - though I would say the renditions here have a bit of spark that the more sedate Songs From the Mirror performances lack. However, I consider it a strength of the setlist compared to earlier live shows, since it gives Fish a deeper bench of songs to work with - the covers don't predominate, and the old Marillion material is used selectively in order to fill out a set which casts the Vigil In a Wilderness of Mirrors and Internal Exile nicely.

By this stage, Fish's repertoire has reached the point where he and the band can experiment with some fairly involved medleys; a particular treat is offered here, in which they start with Vigil and then go on a whistle-stop tour of the four Fish-fronted Marillion albums, moving from He Knows You Know through She Chameleon and Kayleigh to White Russian. It's a nice way for Fish to draw on his past whilst not being ruled by it, the medley format allowing him to interestingly reinterpret and recontextualise the songs.

Between this and decent sound quality, you're already onto a good thing, but the other edge this set has over some of the more tepid releases in the official bootleg series is the atmosphere. Fish, band, and audience are all in a grand mood, and it really comes through. This is a little bit of a surprise, because Fish was at a very delicate point in his career.

Despite some talk of a Five Years sequel with a live recording of The Company from this concert as its B-side, this would never manifest, and Fish must have known that it was likely to never happen - for this concert happened mere days before the deadline when Polydor would have had to exercise their option had they wanted to keep Fish under contract. As Fish tells the story (in the liner notes to the deluxe remaster of Songs From the Mirror), the day came and went without any contact, ending his career as a major label artist and beginning his career as an independent operator.

If I were in Fish's shoes at the time, I would have been full of anxiety at this stage, but Fish and band show no sign of it. Perhaps some explanation for Fish's ebullient mood comes from his enjoyment of the, shall we say, herbal freedoms that the Dutch authorities permit - but a bigger reason is likely the good news received by Phil Tame, the front-of-house sound engineer, that his wife had given birth to their child a few hours before. Either way, despite the behind-the-scenes headaches, Fish and the band deliver a buoyant performance which makes this my favourite of this early wave of Dick Brothers live albums.