LIVE FROM LORELEY

The Loreley concert took place barely a month after the release of Clutching at Straws, and the complete concert recording includes excellent picks from that, the three prior albums with Fish, and tosses in the title track from the Market Square Heroes EP to boot. That being the case, it's a great live overview of the best of the Fish era of Marillion, and the inclusion of female backing singers - an embellishment of Marillion's sound originating in the Clutching At Straws album - actually works really well, the band skilfully finding ways for them to enhance the older material whilst at the same time showing enough restraint to know when the backing singers need to be quiet. A great purchase all round.

A couple of weeks ago I found all of a sudden a copy of this live concert in CD format, I already have the DVD and I didn''t know it was also made CD, and I decided to purchase it because it was really cheap, and also because I love this concert. Of course its charm lies in the communion between sound & video, so the DVD experience is way better, however, I can take the CDs to my work, put my earphones and listening to it when I wish.

Actually there is not so much to say about it, but when you are a fan of the Fish era you will probably love everything, the voice, the lyrics, the energy, the customs and everything, all gathered in order to create wonderful progressive rock songs, shared before a loyal audience. This live show offers a great salad of Marillion''s first albums, so one can listen to "Script for a Jester''s Tear", "Assasin", "Heart of Lothian" or "Market Square Heroes", among other gems.

What I dare say is that even if you are more oriented to the Hogarth era, I am sure you would also like this live show, because it is simply amazing. I wish I had the luck to witness something like this. I invite you to check out my original DVD review here in Progarchives, so you will find a more comprehensive text.

Final grade, 4 stars. Enjoy it!