TWELFTH NIGHT

In the early Eighties the socalled Neo Progressive Rock Movement started to blossom, spearheaded by Marillion, and in their slipstream IQ, Pallas, Pendragon and Twelfth Night. These bands are considered as the most popular Neo Prog bands from that era, but Twelfth Night was the maverick, their sound was hard to pigeonhole, and by far the most original. On this wonderfully recorded (by Steve Wilson) new version of Twelfth Night their first album with Geoff Mann entitled Smiling At Grief ... Revisited (originally from January 1982) you can get an excellent impression from that unique blend of rock, prog, New Wave and synthi-pop, wih the focus on Geoff Mann his very distinctive vocals. The way Geoff Mann colours each song is an extra dimension to the music, from the very first moment I heard his voice (when Fact & Fiction was released in October 1982) I was blown away. About this release the following product details from the band.

"Twelfth Night's 1982 Smiling At Grief album was the first music released with new vocalist, Geoff Mann. With the 40th anniversary arriving in 2022, it was decided to celebrate Smiling At Grief by releasing a 'brand-new' version, by asking friends and peers to remix the album using the original master tracks. The response was amazing as contributions were received from Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Peter Jones (Camel), Simon Godfrey (Tinyfish), Tim Bowness & Brian Hulse, Rob Reed (Magenta), Karl Groom (Threshold), Andy Tillison (The Tangent), Lee Abraham & Stu Nicholson, Dean Baker (Galahad), Gareth Cole (Fractal Mirror), Paul Hodson and Mark Spencer. Some are straight remixes, some enhanced with new instrumentation, and some have been radically reworked, to produce an album that will be treasured by all prog rock fans."

My absolute highlight is the dynamic epic composition Creepshow (two remix-versions) in which Geoff shines with varied vocal contributions, from tender and romantic to theatrical and venomous, this is trademark Geoff Mann, supported by strong work on guitar and synthesizer.

Other interesting tracks are East Of Eden Extended (typical Eighties synthesizer sound and fiery guitar), the wonderful This City (emotional vocals), The Honeymoon Is Over (remix by Karl Groom, keyboards and guitar, here Geoff his vocals remind me of Madness), Intro Puppets (Mark Spencer with Mellotron choirs and a Giorgio Moroder-like synthesizer sound), the instrumental Für Helene Part II (unique 'embryonal' Twelfth Night sound with wah-wah drenched guitar, embellished with the unsurpassed Mellotron choirs), Three Dancers (exciting rock guitar by Gareth Cole, along powerful vocals by Geoff Mann, to me it sounds between Bowie and Spandau Ballet) and the Mark Spencer remix Makes No Sense (slow rhythm, dreamy duo vocals, 1981 Geoff Mann session, and moving guitar solo with Mellotron choir sound, goose bumps).

Neo-Prog History!

Twelfth Night, the band created by Andy Revell in the company of Brian Devoil, started out in 1978, releasing "Smiling at Grief" in 1982, a handful of pieces and demos considered to be their debut work. However, it was not until the release of "Fact and Fiction" that they found the stability of an album conceived as such. Also released in 1982, "Fact and Fiction" can be catalogued as one of the pioneers of neo-progressive, even before the irruption of future references such as Marillion or IQ.

The album tackles with ease such sensitive subjects as the obscurities of political power and its manipulative arts, the nuclear threat or insanity, with a scathing proposal, at times dramatic, and whose instrumental development impresses for the solidity with which the band executes it.

From the intricate and critical "We are Sane", where the histrionic and versatile voice of Geoff Mann (with a nod to the style of Peter Hammill) supported by the intriguing keyboards of Clive Mitten and the crystalline and sustained guitars of Revell, both orbiting over an atmosphere dominated by melancholy, the songs follow one another thickly, the dehumanised "Human Being" with Mitten's delicate piano notes and Revell's guitar solo, the disconsolate "This City" and its lamenting gait, but above all the sinister and super progressive "Creepshow", where again Mann's schizoid singing stands out, accompanied by an instrumentation to match in one of the best tracks of the album. And the general darkness of "Fact and Fiction" finds a small dose of luminous hope in the arpeggiated melody of "Love Song" to close the album with an epic denouement dominated by Revell's huge guitar solo and Mitten's concluding keyboard.

Beyond "Fact and Fiction", an excellent album, the fleeting presence of Mann, who left the band amicably a year later, and the irregularity of the next two albums, affected the general perception of Twelfth Night's brief studio discography.

4 stars.

An album of acquired taste that becomes an addiction, at least to the more "darker" listener. Powerful compositions with excellent orchestration, which are elevated by extraordinary and passionate vocals, delivering deep social and philosophical lyrics. Twelfth Night created a seminal album, a true landmark of the neo-prog genre, that manages to bring out suppressed feelings of reaction (or rebellion to be more precise) towards the social hypocrisy and ugliness of the modern world. The atmosphere of the music is mainly depressing and melancholic, however, there are certain breaks of light and optimism, calling for a more positive attitude towards life, spreading the message of love.

It is sometimes hard to recognise that Twelfth Night only released four studio albums during their existence, two with Geoff Mann as singer and two with Andy Sears. In a world containing any justice they would have been huge, and their albums would all rightly be recognised as classics, yet we all know the world is not fair and so they disappeared. But, it must be said that due to the fans and the incredible work put in by drummer Brian Devoil they have had a much longer life than anyone expected. Albums have been reissued and extended, new rarities have been made available, and a whole series of live shows released on CD. They even reformed and in various line-ups put on some fantastic shows, and now they have turned their attention to their debut studio album, 'Smiling At Grief'.

To put this into some context, the band had started life as an instrumental outfit at Reading University, settling on a line-up of Andy Revell, Brian Devoil and Clive Mitten. Their mate Geoff Mann was around as backdrop painter, while Rick Battersby operated the dry ice, but their first singer was Electra Mcleod who sang on one tape. After she left there were various auditions held, and by the time they recorded this their debut album in 1982 the line-up was settled with Geoff and Rick both now in the band to create the 'classic' line-up.

'Smiling At Grief' has been made available in a few different versions prior to this, but this time the band invited in others to remix different songs and possibly even add some instrumentation and additional vocals to the original. The project was kicked off by Steven Wilson, who had this to say, "This is easily my favourite period of Twelfth Night, when the band were reaching for some kind of new wave / progressive hybrid ? and successfully so, they really captured something of that moment in time, both the past and the future. Even if these were meant to be quick and dirty demo recordings it's been great to be given the chance to elevate the sonics a little (hopefully!)". Each musician was given a song, or two, to work with so as well as Wilson we have Pete Jones, Andy Tillison, Rod Reed, Gareth Cole, Simon Godfrey and many others and the result is a cleaning up of the originals yet everyone has stayed true to the originals, paying homage as opposed to trying to turn them into something which is theirs.

In all this set contains the original nine tracks plus seven bonus cuts while there are another five available digitally. I always felt this was the album which contains greatness, just not at the same level as 'Fact and Fiction', but "Creepshow" will always be thought of by many as Geoff Mann's finest hour, and the versions by Simon Godfrey and Paul Hodson demonstrate why that is indeed the case. Surely any fan of modern prog already has this album, often multiple times (like me), but this is yet another which must be added to the list. 40 years on, it is still completely essential. I haven't said a single word about the music and what it sounds like, but if you are a TN fan you already have this in your collection, and if you are a proghead and don't know about TN then now is the time to rectify that omission.  

It has been a very long tine indeed since I have been able to write anything remotely critical about one of the best progressive rock bands to come out of the UK and I am certainly not going to start now. They may have released just four studio albums during their career, but there has never been any doubt about their importance to the progressive scene and one can only wonder what would have happened if Geoff hadn't decided to move away from the group and follow his heart into a life in the ministry. I remember talking to Brian in the early Nineties about the band ever having a reunion, and he discounted it as no-one was really involved in music anymore, plus Andy Sears was in Spain and Clive Mitten was in Australia. Still, he kept working on remasters and extended editions of the albums and also released a whole series of live albums from different points in the band's career.

No one ever expected Clive to come back to the UK, and even when he did there was no certainty the band would reform, but reform they did (without original keyboard player Rick Battersby), and since then there have been quite a few trips down memory lane with members of Galahad subbing in at different times. But all good things come to an end and Andy Revell wanted to go out at a big event, and so Barbican's Sill Street Theatre was booked and on Saturday 15th December 2012 the band played the final (?) gig. The line-up featured three guys who had been there at the very beginning, namely Brian Devoil (drums), Andy Revell (guitar, backing vocals) and Clive Mitten (bass, guitar, keyboards, backing vocals). They were joined by Dean Baker on keyboards and piano, who had been a constant presence since the band reformed, along with 'new' singer Mark Spencer who also provided some guitar. Both Dean and Mark are also full-time members of Galahad (plus other bands), while Roy Keyworth, who used to also be in both Twelfth Night and Galahad, joins the band for 'East of Eden'.

As always, the band kicked off proceedings with 'The Ceiling Speaks' where Revell and Mitten duel on guitars, with bass coming from synths, and immediately they are up and running and the audience are in fine voice. All anyone really knows of the setlist at a TN concert is the opening song and the last, which will always be 'Love Song', so I was intrigued to see what was going to be included here and I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that there was a significant move away from material recorded by Andy Sears. Mark's voice is quite similar to Geoff's in many ways, so he would be more comfortable with the early songs, and perhaps that is why a decision was made to include just a couple of songs from 'Art and Illusion' and nothing at all from 'The Virgin Album'. It is a shame not to hear the drama of 'Blondon Fair' or 'Take A Look' but putting those to one side I think the only song of note not in this set would be 'The Collector'. We have time for 'We Are Sane', 'Sequences' and 'Creepshow' alongside the likes of 'Human Being' and 'Fact and Fiction'.

By my reckoning this is the twelfth official live album from Twelfth Night (counting 'Live and Let Live' plus the 'Live and Let Live Definitive' albums as two), which somehow seems fitting, and yes I do have them all. Each one is a gem in its own right, a snapshot of time, and while I must confess this doesn't quite live up to Geoff's last album with them, that is less to do with the performance and more the raw emotion and passion from everyone knowing it was Geoff Mann's last ever gig with the band. This set has also been released on Blu-ray and DVD, but due to poor planning on my part I have ended up in one part of the country with my Blu-ray player in another, so that review will have to wait a few weeks. But, if you search for 'Twelfth Night A Night To Remember' on YouTube you will be able to see some clips from that, which proves just what a band this is/was.

This can't be the end; we've already had a teaser with the 'Sequences' EP so let us see what happens next. Until then, listen to a modern version of one of the best prog bands ever to come out of Reading.

This little curiosity is really halfway between being a Twelfth Night compilation and a Twelfth Night reunion album. You see, whilst most of the tracks on here (the exact proportions changing from edition to edition as the track listing gets fiddled with by successive record companies) constitute a sort of best-of for the band's Geoff Mann and Andy Sears-fronted periods - including the odd rarity, like the B-side Blondon Fair (perhaps the best song the Andy Sears-fronted version of the band ever recorded, though Counterpoint from Art & Illusion gives it a run for its money) - that isn't the really exciting thing about this release.

You see, back in 1988 Geoff Mann and the other former members of Twelfth Night - which had by this point disbanded in the wake of the disappointing XII album - were enjoying one of their regular group phone calls and reminiscing about old times, and the subject of The Collector came up. This was an epic song from the Mann era of Twelfth Night, and combined perhaps their most advanced collection of musical ideas with what may well have been Geoff Mann's best lyrical concept ever - a miser on his deathbed, reminiscing about his life and pondering whether his relentless accumulation of material wealth and power was actually worth it in the end, a compelling story of profound philosophical interest even if you didn't necessarily share Geoff's Christian interpretation of the subject. (I think the lyrics work so well in part because even if Geoff's conclusions on the matter were rooted in his faith, his portrayal of the central character in the song rings true and doesn't depend on that - and the concept that "Heaven is not for sale" is perhaps something all can agree on, even if they have different interpretations of what that means.)

The Collector had enjoyed a few live airings in the late Mann era - indeed, Twelfth Night's archival live releases have captured a few of these, with two versions appearing on the Flashbacks release and another appearing on the 2CD "Definitive Edition" of Live and Let Live. Geoff and the gang felt that it was a bit of a shame that they'd never nailed it in the studio, however - and rather than idly regret "the one that got away", they decided to get together for a bit of studio time (which also yielded a new version of Love Song, compiled here) in order to finally nail that sucker.

And nail it they did: not only is The Collector a major pillar of this compilation, but this studio version of it is also by far the best rendition available - and set next to the other material here, it's readily apparent that it was well worth the effort to produce this studio version of it, since it may well be Twelfth Night's greatest artistic accomplishment.

It's a bit of a shame, then, that this compilation should currently be out of print. Doubtless rights issues are involved, since the band have otherwise done a sterling job of recent years of ensuring that their material is available. Sure, most of the material on here is available elsewhere in some form or another - but it still seems like a shame that this one studio version of The Collector, easily the definitive rendition of the song, should be commercially unavailable at present.

Those who were there back in the day have assured me that in the original cluster of neo-prog bands regularly headlining the Marquee Club in London, the top tier consisted of Marillion, Pallas, Solstice, and Twelfth Night. (It's amazing to think that leaders of the genre like Pendragon or IQ were on a second tier back then - sometimes headlining in their own right, but rarely if ever put on the same level as the big four).

Solstice, with their roots in the festival circuit and New Age/hippyish attitude, never got signed by a major label - and had no intention to - but the other three all got a big contract sooner or later. And it's really rather striking how different the destinies of those three were.

Marillion, of course, put out Script For a Jester's Tear and the rest was history - there's no question that they had the biggest success out of any of the Marquee neo-prog bands.

Pallas produced The Sentinel, but were the victim of the running order of the album being hacked up and crucial segments of the Atlantis Suite being carved out for single B-sides. (It would have been far better had the label simply left the album alone and kept the more commercial-sounding tracks recorded for it on the singles, so at least the different sides of the band - one highly theatrical and prog-oriented, one much more pop-rock-ish - would be reflected on formats better suited for those styles.) Pallas would, however, keep chugging on after that, and eventually plot a more independent course for themselves and earn a reappraisal in the eyes of the prog fanbase in more recent years.

For Twelfth Night, though, the tragedy is that the much-coveted major label contract seems to have been a death sentence for them. Twelfth Night had put out more material on an independent basis than any of their neo-prog peers, with multiple studio efforts and live albums under their belt (including Fact and Fiction and Live and Let Live, respectively their best studio and live releases), so when they signed to Virgin at the end of 1985 - after Marillion had stormed the charts with Misplaced Childhood and after Pallas's moment in the spotlight had come and gone - it must have felt to fans and band alike as though the hard work of the past half a decade had finally paid off.

What a shame, then, that the product of that contract should be Twelfth Night, AKA XII, AKA The Virgin Album. With a sound drastically simplified and with only the faintest ghosts of their former dark neo-prog stylings present, it's no wonder that the album was the subject of a critical backlash on the part of fans. The band gave up the ghost shortly afterwards, and whilst they have occasionally got back together - there was a 1988 studio reunion with Geoff Mann that yielded Collectors' Item, for instance, and much more recently they've had concerts with Andy Sears and have put out a studio rendition of Sequences - it's fair to say that post-XII, Twelfth Night was done as far as being an active, energetic songwriting unit went (with the various reunion efforts all being dedicated to old material).

Sad to say, it seems like the creative well just ran dry - the band had lost their inspiration for producing further material in the "classic" Twelfth Night style and seem to have spent XII and the period preceding it casting about to see if they can find new inspiration. It's particularly interesting to listen to XII in the context of the Corner of the World live album, for it puts the lie to the idea that Virgin somehow pressured the band into changing their style in order to get a hit. (Given that Misplaced Childhood was a huge hit by leaning into Marillion's neo-prog approach, wouldn't Virgin have *wanted* Twelfth Night to go proggy with it in light of that?)

You see, the Corner of the World live album was recorded well over half a year before the Virgin contract was signed, and it shows that the band were already at the time pivoting towards the style they air here. People like to make Duran Duran comparisons, and I guess Andy Revell does become rather fond here of a guitar tone reminiscent of, say, the lead guitar from Rio, but at the same time Duran Duran were far better at coming up with sleek pop hooks than the band are here.

Perhaps the best track on the album is the concluding Take a Look, which also happens to be one of the oldest tracks on the album; an early version, substantially closer to the classic Twelfth Night style, can be heard on the Night Vision archival live album which captures the Art & Illusion tour. Comparing the two versions, it seems like here the band have gone for a bright, airy production which is more or less the absolute opposite of the dark, claustrophobic approach they had taken for most of their career, taking the edge off the harder and more pensive section of the songs whilst trying to make the chorus the sort of feelgood singalong section people waved their cigarette lighters to back when everyone took cigarette lighters to concerts to wave along to the music to.

The tragedy of XII is that the band clearly are not technically incompetent - they seem to be trying their best to find a new sound to revive their creative juices. If any blame can be attached to the record company, it's the production job on the album which is so alien to the Twelfth Night aesthetic that I can only assume that producer John L. Walters (of the synth-pop group Landscape) either simply hadn't heard any of the band's prior music or just imposed his own aesthetic on proceedings, but a somewhat "off" production can't quite account for all the cracks that are showing in the foundations here. Worth it for fans who want an OK studio runthrough of Take a Look, Blue Powder Monkey, and some of the other material here, but otherwise you can see why this album would be a career-killer.

Twelfth Night's archival series has been a really valuable resource for documenting the band's history, filling out the gaps between their official releases. In particular, Andy Sears' tenure in the band, which previously had only been represented by the Art & Illusion mini-LP, the XII album, and a few tracks on Collectors' Item, has been given a fairer airing by the archival series, with releases like Live From London or Night Vision showcasing has command of the Geoff Mann-era material, as well as revealing a Twelfth Night sound in which the new Sears-era material sits coherently next to the Mann-era material.

One of the biggest puzzles among Twelfth Night fans is how the band ended up going from the sound of Art & Illusion, which whilst hardly devoid of pop hooks at the same time sits comfortably next to the Geoff Mann material, to the sound of the XII album, often compared to Duran Duran's output and critically panned next to more or less all their album releases between Live At the Target and Art & Illusion.

A common fan theory is that, having inked a deal with Virgin, the band had been put under the dreaded Record Company Pressure to produce something commercial-sounding. However, Corner of the World puts the lie to that. Hailing from the mini-tour the band undertook in May 1985 to road test some of the new material they'd been prepared, we find the group's musical direction already in the process of shifting.

The new songs include a good chunk of the material which ended up on XII, and Andy Revell's guitar work is already showing strong influences from the sound Andy Taylor made famous on Rio and Hungry Like the Wolf. Coming from a series of concerts hailing from months before Virgin had anything to do with Twelfth Night: Virgin only inked the deal in December 1985, when the band were already in the process of recording XII!

It is understandable why Twelfth Night felt the moment was right to really make a push to get commercial success on a level comparable to their critical acclaim. Art & Illusion had actually reached no, 83 on the UK charts, after all, so it seemed like the moment to strike had come - and with peers like Marillion and Pallas already having had their big breaks with the major labels, I imagine that the band felt the moment for them had truly come. However, it's a shame that this moment seems to have coincided with the band's creative energies failing them, or at least dragging them down a cul de sac.

Sure, there's merits to Take A Look, which would go on to be the only real prog epic on XII with even a passing resemblance to something the Twelfth Night of old might have done - but that song had already been part of the band's repertoire since at least 1984, since there was a version on Night Vision. When it comes to the new material freshly prepared in 1985, sadly the stuff's rather underwhelming. (It doesn't help that the sound quality here seems to be a bit shaky even by the standards of the other soundboard recordings in Twelfth Night's archival series.)

It really feels like the band could have done with consolidating their musical ideas more, working further on polishing and workshopping the most promising songs and song sections in the new material rather than churning out a large number of sub-par songs in a hurry. (Even the band don't seem to have been sold on all the material here - Requiem, White Glass, and South of the Wind evidently didn't pass muster in the band's eyes, because they didn't make the cut for XII - not even for the B-sides on the accompanying singles.) You can understand the desire to get the band out of Geoff Mann's shadow - prior tours still had the set lists filled out with Mann-era material, but this is very much dominated by Sears-era stuff - but this seems to have been done at the cost of quality control. Or perhaps the whole Twelfth Night idea had largely run its course, at least as far as songwriting went...

This archival release captures Twelfth Night on the tour they undertook supporting the Art & Illusion mini-album (more of an EP, really), all of whose tracks are represented here alongside older Geoff Mann era material and some other new works, like the sinister Blondon Fair and an early version of Take a Look, which would be the big epic number on their Virgin Records album in a couple of years time.

Sourced from soundboard recordings, this album does not present one single show, but instead selects the best takes of each individual songs from a cluster of shows on the tour and uses them to reconstruct the full set list. Andy Sears seems a little more confident now as the band's frontman; he seems to have trouble judging the tone of the early section of We Are Sane (it's notable that, as the Corner of the World live recording attests, the band would eventually trim the early sections from the song), but really it would be difficult for anyone who wasn't Geoff Mann to pull off the dramatic performances demanded in the early stretches of the piece.

For the rest of the setlist, the new material sits nicely next to the old and comes across as a logical next step in the band's evolution. On top of that, with Art & Illusion troubling the lower reaches of the album charts, the band seemed to be right on the verge of a breakthrough. Little would they realise that trouble was ahead.

In addition, the main highlights of the setlist are still the old Mann-and-earlier era songs, which perhaps is too be expected given that they'd only done one mini-album with Sears (and some of the songs in that were performed by the Mann-era group!), but even so if you've been getting deep enough into Twelfth Night to trouble these live issues, you probably already have ample versions of these. It's a decent live set, but nothing to really radically change the destiny of the band - and it comes at a point when they were teetering between stagnation and misguided abandonment of their signature sound (eventually choosing the latter, as their Virgin album confirmed).

This is the soundtrack to the DVD of the same name, which was recorded for the same Live From London television show which yielded IQ's Living Proof. Neo-prog fans again have reason to be thankful to that particular show; this time around, for capturing Twelfth Night in the process of breaking in brand new lead vocalist Andy Sears.

This is a particularly interesting recording for the purposes of assessing Andy's tenure as Twelfth Night frontman, because the group hadn't developed any new material with him yet but instead delivers a setlist which could have come out of Geoff Mann's era. (Yes, it has Art and Illusion on it, but though the studio version of that is an Andy- fronted track, it actually was originally developed under Geoff's tenure; the Flashbacks archival release and the double disc "Definitive Edition" of Live and Let Live includes Geoff singing it.

As such, this gives us the fairest opportunity we have to directly compare Andy with Geoff, on material which Geoff had also sung and before the band's sound had developed much further from the end of Geoff's era. Here, Andy reveals himself to be a characterful vocalist in his own right - a bit more manic and a bit less depressive than Geoff, he can get a bit carried away in the more theatrical parts of the songs and he's a bit more of a traditional frontman in terms of his stage persona.

By and large he does a reasonable job of stepping into Geoff's shoes, with some slips here and there. (He seems a little all over the place during the intro to We Are Sane - the section before the "This woman's place is in a home..." lyric - and it's notable that late in his tenure the band would snip that section from the track altogether, as documented on the Corner of the World release.) Combine this with a high-quality recording sourced directly from the multi-track tapes, and you have one of the better-sounding Twelfth Night live albums from the 1980s, on a par with Live and Let Live.