Hogarth could never sing Market Square Heroes and Fish could never sing Easter, but they do their own stuff brilliantly.

Not a fan of the group..putting it mildly... but will admit to being less repulsed by what I have heard by Marillion era Hogwarts.

They still experiment quite a bit and still take me by surprise every once in a while. :)

Marillion elevator music?! Man, those must be some cool elevators. 

Nice to see Holidays in Eden getting some love!

Script was fun when I was 14, but I can't listen it anymore. It's so kitchy. And Mick Pointer is awful.
The bassplaying and some keyboard- and guitarparts are nice. But the production is so held back. there's no grit, no urgency.

Fugazy has more grit but lacks good songwriting. Assasing and Punch and Judy are great rocksongs though.

Misplaced and Clutching are warmer and finally they found their sound. Gone is the grit and the angry vocals.

This is the period I like the most. And the drumming of Ian is what makes the band stand out. He has so much taste (on Fugazi he's too bust though).

Holidays in Eden, Season's End and Brave fit nicely in that pop-prog sound.

From then on, their discography gets really unstable. Great albums and mediocre albums, flirting with alt.rock etc.

That being said, the band released 5 really great albums in a row, with both singers.
That's how I perceive it.

Marillion are a great popband, and a terrible progband, their epics are not all that great. Mostly just a collage of shorter pop-songs.

When they do pop, they are really great, but when they try prog, they fail.

I like the short 4 to 5 minute songs they put out and some epics (Interior Lulu, Strange Engine, Ocean Cloud), wich are more Pink Floydish-atmosferic epics than real prog-epics.

Oh, and Grendel was my favorite song when I was 14 years old. Now I think it lacks a lot. It's not surprising the band doesn't play it.

damn captcha I wrote a lot and it's gone...

I disagree with most of the things you say. I explained thoroughly but captcha screwed it... :(

It took me three attempts to even post this.
It's not a rant though, and I love good pop (a-ha, Tears for Fears, Alphaville etc.), and I lump Marillion into that category. Good, atmosferic pop by talented musicians.

Still I'm curious about your thoughts on this.

Marillion don't do pop. Sorry, but catchy does not equal pop. 

Mediocre albums? Which ones do you have in mind?

Brave pop-prog? Oh my God, NO...

That's how it sounds to me.

Maybe it's the lack of good, steady, groovy drumming by Mick and the very clean production that makes the debut so tame to me.

The liveversions of Script-songs on Real to Reel and Thieving Magpie far exceeds the studio-versions.

What's not pop about Marillion? Almost all songs are 4/4 and verse-chorus. Maybe the only song on Brave that is more proggish is Goodbye to All That, but I've heard the bonus-disc and it's basically a jam. Great musicianship (the instrumental part reminds me of the Bitter Suite on Misplaced), but it's more atmosferic than progressive.

I love to sing along with Marillion, and they invoke some kind of atmosphere. The lyrical content is the main focus, and Hogarth tends to sing over all the guitarsolos, so there is not even much space for keyboard- and guitarsolos.
To me they are just like Simple Minds, The Editors, Tears for Fears and Crowded House.
But is it a bad thing? No, I don't think so. If I want to sing along to nice little popsongs than I play Marillion.

I think their most progressive albums are Marillion.com and Anoraknophobia, because they tend to experiment with different styles and they are more free to do what they want.
I like the trip-hoppy approach they attempt on those two albums.

And to explain my idea of pop: pop = popular music. So basically anything created after the invention of records and radio is pop.
Except maybe jazz, blues, classical etc., because they are older than recorded music and they need to ave different genres.

As for progressive rock; I know a lot of progheads hate hitsingles and popmusic, because (I really don't knwo).
But I love Gentle Giant and Miles Davis and Death Angel as much as I love Sade, Jamiroquai, Red Hot Chili Peppers and a-ha.

Great music is great music. And Marillion make great pop-music. 

To some: Less is More, Marillion.com, Raditation, Anoraknophobia, Strange Engine, Somewhere Else

To me: Afraid of Sunlight, Happiness is the Road, Radiation, Sounds That Can't Be Made, FEAR

I think in the latter days, Somewhere Else and Less is More are the best albums they came up with.

How can you all stand the terrible drumming of Mick Pointer? The 'drumsolo' in the Web is embarassing at least.
And how can you listen past the sterile production?

The songwriting of He Knows You Know, Forgotten Sons and Chelsea Monday are great, but I really prefer them with Ian, and a more live-sound to it (Thieving Magpie, Real to Reel).

It Bites are an another example of a really great popband, with sing-along-songs. I love them (the Dunnery-albums).

Nobody's ever said This Strange Engine and Anoraknophobia to be mediocre albums, on the contrary. 

Less is More was a nice experiment but that is all.

Afraid Of Sunlight mediocre? Makes me sad reading that. If you said you don't like it, would have been more than ok.

There's so many music to listen to.
I can't listen to an album wich has too many flaws.

My thoughts about Script:
Fish sounds too raw, I don't like his voice on this album.
Mick's drumming is terrible.

Steve is terribly under-produced. On later albums his guitarsound is much better.

But because these guys were 20 or so, I think it's okay (i rated it 3 or 4*, can't remember) because I have fond memories of it. But do I enjoy listening to it? No, not really. Like I said, I prefer the liveversion (I rated Real to Reel and Thieving Mapie 4*)

And yes, when an album has terrible drumming, or a terrible production, or terrible vocals (it's a matter of taste), I rate it that way.
Wishbone Ash and Camel are always victim when it comes to bashing them because of the vocals, for example.

For instance I can't listen Iron Maiden and Metallica because of the horrific drums (and vocals to).
Maybe the songwriting of both bands are stellar and groundbreaking, but I can't listen past bad musicianship. In the end music is meant to move me, to make me enjoy it.
I'm not a music-school-teacher whose job it is to find the good parts in something that's not enjoyable on a whole.

On the other hand; a lot of music that I like very much, sounds drab to others. I like Civilian by Gentle Giant, wich apparently nobody likes.

I also enjoy the 80's period of Rush much more than their 70's output.

I also love the latterday Ozrics (more streamlined) than their badly produced jamband-days.

Etc. etc.

So that's how music works.
Ontopic: I loved Script when I was young, but I moved on.

Afraid of Sunlight is so downtempo I skip almost all songs. The only songs I like are Out of this World (because of the guitarsolo) and King (because of the build-up).

Afraid of Sunlight is the biggest example of what prog is not (to me).
That's why I am not a big fan of Steven Wilson, Radiohead, and all the other doomy, gloomy, downtempo, Pink Floydish, intellectual, way-to-extended songs with no adventure. But that's my taste.
I can totally understand that people want to listen to this kind of dream-prog, but not for me.

An album like Marillion.com, Somewhere Else, Holdiays in Eden, Season's End, Clutching, Misplaced has so much more to offer, than their other albums.
Maybe I'm exactly the opposite of the mainstream-proghead. It's not on purpose though.

The common opinion on albums, I guess.

There seems to be a lot of consensus on certain albums/artists.

Most of the time I agree but of lot of times I disagree.

For instance: there's nothing I enjoy about Riverside, but they are so popular.
Another example: I love Saga, but almost nobody does.

There's a certain average opinion on certain things, I call that mainstream.
The mainstream top-bands are: ELP, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Porcupine Tree, Rush
The mainstream top-albums are all by these bands.

Not only the endscore prove that, but I look at the amount of scores. Some albums have 17 ratings, others have thousands. That means something.

I tend not to get involved in debates and discussions where opinions are bashed.
But I realize that my taste does not always meet the average opinion.

I love the 70's output of Hawkwind, because of what it is, and what it meant for pyschrock and spacerock, and out of nostagia.

But my favorite Hawkwind of all time is Levitation. It's sheer perfection to me.
And I love Space Bandits so much (female vocals, violin, heavy drumming, it's great).

And to be on topic, I just like the 80's sounding poppy prog of Misplaced-Clutching-Season-Holidays-Brave.
It's a good run of 5 very good albums.

I also think that Fish did some great stuff solo. I like Vigil-Sunsets-Raingods-Fellini-Feast very much aswell.
In fact Fellini is the best thing Fish did, in my opinion. And it's very pop-oriented.

I have the same feeling.
When I was 15 or 16 I liked what Fish was doing.
He just swallowed a dictonairy and as a dessert a thesaurus.

I like the lyrics to Punch and Judy, but the rest; awful,
Musically there are some highlights, but the best song from this period never made the album: Cinderella Search.

Fish was lyrically better when he became a solo-artist. Less selfindulgent and more politacally and socially engaged. Although I love Clutching, the lyrics from that album really touch my soul.

not cool...