BRAVE

The only other Marillion albums I've heard are Script For A Jester's Tear and Misplaced Childhood, their two most acclaimed on this website. Recently, I bought Brave and Clutching at Straws, and I've managed to listen to both several times. Of the two, one of the Fish-era and one H-era, this one takes the cake; in fact, this one trumps Script as well, and ties with Misplaced Childhood as my favorite album of theirs thus far. This album is wonderfully beautiful. It manages to captivate me, providing me with ethereal imagery of the concept itself. The music relates to the story, and Hogarth's vocals are very emotional, quite possibly as much as Fish's. I quite honestly prefer Hogarth's voice, but I still need some more of the band's 90s albums. The songs flow seamlessly, and they go rather quickly despite the length of some of them. Of course, when a 12 minute song goes by in what seems like 7 minutes, the material must be at the very least engrossing. In this case, it's exquisite.