AFRAID OF SUNLIGHT

"Afraid of Sunlight", Marillion's eighth album, continues the path traced by "Brave", but taking their proposal to an even more introspective level. Without being a full-fledged concept album, the subject matter reflects in several passages on how difficult it is to deal with the demands and challenges that come with fame, accompanying the stories with an instrumentation that favours dark and suffocating atmospheres, something that generated friction and the subsequent break-up with their record label at the time (EMI), who were expecting a more agile and less bitter work.

Beyond the opening "Gazpacho" referring to the controversial case of O.J. Simpson case, and the satirical "Cannibal Surf Babe", an unfortunate piece in Beach Boys mode that deals with eternal youthful souls, the album dives into the depths of the psyche without haste and with few individual displays in favour of a group instrumental solidity, guided by Steve Hogarth's apt verses, as in the peaceful and inspiring "Beautiful", one of the band's most heartfelt ballads, or in the fearful "Afraid of Sunlight" and the desolate "Out of this World", both impregnated with an overwhelming melancholy. A depth that at times can also border on exasperation due to the excessively weary tone of the aching "Afraid of Sunrise" and "Beyond You".

The album concludes with its most outstanding piece, "King", which deals with the tragic end of Kurt Cobain with a dramatism that grows until it reaches the instrumental climax with Steve Rothery's powerful solo, one of the guitarist's rare licences, accompanied by Ian Mosley's very good percussion and with the band in full swing. A closing song where the Englishmen show all the intensity they are capable of transmitting when they set their minds to it.

"Afraid of Sunlight" is serious and complex in its subject matter, careful and neat in its production, and perhaps lacking a little more energetic forcefulness in its musical development to consider it an excellent work, a point that I don't think it reached.

3/3.5 stars.