HOLIDAYS IN EDEN

While the songs on "Season's End", the first Marillion album without Fish, were already ready before Steve Hogarth's arrival, "Holidays in Eden", the sixth album, is the first one where the singer really had a relevant participation in the definition of the band's new musical approach. A proposal of more linear and less intricate tonalities, on the way to finding their own identity and taking distance from their recent history. That is precisely what "Holidays in Eden" conveys, flying in winds closer to pop, turning at times into a work with little flavour and tinged with some flashes of greater elaboration.

Hogarth, who decisively tries to take charge of the situation although he is somewhat impostured, is accompanied by the calm keyboards of Mark Kelly and by the neat arpeggiated guitars and solos of the very correct Steve Rothery, generating an atmosphere of lightness and persistent accessibility throughout the album, getting closer to the commercial radio waves rather than to the canons of the progressive world, as is the case of the lively "Cover my Eyes", and the light "No One Can" and "Dry Land". Even the expectant title track with its catchy chorus fails to get off the ground.

Beyond the feeling that "Holidays in Eden" doesn't take any major risks, there are nevertheless some valuable passages: the opening, sorrowful "Splintering Heart", the acoustic chords of the melodic "Waiting to Happen", and the concluding "100 Nights" with an emotive guitar solo by Rothery backed by Ian Mosley's drums. Tracks that are enough for the album to scrape a pass mark, but not much more than that.

A new and definitive stage was underway for Marillion, and the hitherto little known Hogarth clearly assumed the musical leadership from "Holidays in Eden" onwards.

2.5/3 stars